Julie Myerson - why am I not surprised that a book has materialised concerning her own son's drug issues?

[glasjam]

Read this is in today's Observer www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/01/julie-myerson-novel-drug-addiction

Does anyone else have the uncomfortable feeling that I have on learning that she is writing about her son's drug problems? I know that writers often mine their own personal experiences for material but I think she's putting her literary endeavours ahead of her son here. From what I can gather, he is still young, his drug issues are ongoing, and although he is out of the family home, surely this is risking any possible future reconcilliation? I also baulk at the way she "weaves historical research about Yelloly with her disturbing account of her son's ejection from the family home" It just smacks of middle-class-writer angst.

My cynicism is further fuelled by my very strong suspicion that Julie Myerson is the author of Living with Teenagers - but that's another story...

Amazon only changed the AUTHOR tag from 'ANONYMOUS' to 'Julie Myerson' yesterday

actually i believe it refers to the shit that is often found hanging off sheep bottoms...

most odd about the reviews. someone call the daily mail.

Perhaps JM is writing her own reviews on Amazon (haven't read them btw).

threadie don't start pulling at that loose thread... my whole world will unfurl with it.

it's okay to MN it's okay to MN

The conjunction of your two posts, aitch, made a mental image of pulling shit-caked strands from sheep's bottom. (Much in the manner of Myerson's creative menthod.)

Thanks, Dandy. I shall stalk her!

lol. and yuck.

I wondered if it was that dagging - they do it on the Archers regularly (generally only to sheep afaik)

oh yeah my farmer friends doing dagging at school, when they shave the poo wool off to stop the flies irrc

By morningpaper on Fri 13-Mar-09 11:44:15
Amazon only changed the AUTHOR tag from 'ANONYMOUS' to 'Julie Myerson' yesterday

But apparently the publishers issued a new edition with a new cover last Thursday, mp - how does that work, eh? eh? eh?

I mean I remember...

There are things from my childhood that I remember very differently to the way my sister does, and there are things she remembers which I have no recolection of. She is older so I expect her memory to be different to mine in so much that she was more aware than I was about certain things that were happening.

On the other hand we may well have been treated quite differently by our dad because he had different ways of dealing and interacting with us and also had different expectations of us.

I read the stuff from Myerson's sister and I can see how her dad may have been bitter about the way his wife effectively abandoned him for another man and took his children away without warning.

I used to read that 'Living with..' column and was left with conflicting feelings about the author's parenting skills.

Was she very patient, or very hands off almost to the point of not parenting at all?

Was she a naive sap or simply a gentle person?

She irritated me, but was I just jealous because she seemed to have a 'pollyanna' 'it'll be ok in the end' 'whimsical' approach?

I just found it hard to get a handle on her personality and the maner in which she claimed to parent. It just seemed not to ring true.

I now read her son's claims that she slapped him across the face repeatedly in order to get a key off him, he then hit her back. It seems her column had a very skewed view of how she and her partner approached parenting the kids. I expect her book will have the same skewed viewpoint of the 'drug addiction'.

I really feel for her son, I suspect he will be ok in the end but no thanks to ma and pa.

I've been indulging in some serious schadenfreude all morning, reading the Myerson debate in the Grauniad "Comments is Free" section. DO check it out! (although there are 700+ posts to wade through).

La Myerson is receiving a thorough and comprehensive mauling from the readership she appears to regard as her own. Methinks she has seriously misjudged her audience. Lots of debate as well about the Grauniad's culpability in promoting the ghastly toe-curlingly smug over-privileged fuckwittery that she's been peddling for years.

Her admission that she lied repeatedly to her children about her authorship of the foul LWT column, even after they had been "outed" at school and were suffering as a result, says it all. Hubris.

Ponders I think the new cover was just the standard paperback reissue and still says anonymous. The new cover image showing on Amazon still says Anonymous if you peer closely.

Books are printed about 1 month before publication so there is no way Headline could have anticipated this.

At the most they might sticker the new editions, and reprint when the first edition has sold out.

Mrs F - totally off topic, but I love your name: the good professor is required reading here!

Oh so it does, Daisy - damn, another good theory bites the dust

However...IMO it's still intriguing that

a) they decided to re-publish at the same time as the brought-forward publication of the Lost Child &

b) they changed the title for the new edition to "Living with Teenagers" to match the column

It suggests some intensive behind-the-scenes manoeuvring going on, don't you think?

Oh, cancel b) I hadn't registered that it was also called that before, I thought it was just 3 kids etc.

the republication date is a bit of a coincidence but pbs are usually republished about 12 months after the hardback, it's not an unusual date to choose - and as far as I can make out the PR storm was started by her son, not her, so I don't think this row was engineered to break out around republication.

I would hazard a guess that it's possible that it was the reissue of LWT that made Jake cross enough to go to the Daily Mail - but that's a blind guess, it might be just coincidence.

Not sure what you mean about the change of title - the old edition was called Living with Teenagers too...?

sorry, xposted with your last!

I bet Headline are rubbing their hands though - and hastily reprinting

Aw, thanks subtlemouse!

My DH "IS" Prof. Branestawm you see. I have posted elsewhere on MN about the joys of living in an uber-geek household!

Right - back on topic........)

Has anyone here read Myerson's book "Home"? It's the only thing I've read by her apart from the newspaper stuff. I thought it was an interesting premise for a book, the history of the house they bought when the children were very small, wanting to create a perfect family home. It sheds a revealing light on her attitudes and values.

She was VERY surprised when she discovered her home had been a boarding house for West Indian immigrants during the 1950's and 1960's. It never seems to have occurred to her that people "not like us" could have lived in "her" tastefully re-modelled little bubble of a dream home.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about the Bookseller piece - you're right.

I still think it's coincidence about the reissue of LWT being "timed" to fit with this. If this had all been planned in the sense that Ponders is talking about a) the mainstream media campaign would have been started nearer to publication of The Lost Child and b) the two pub dates would have been closer together.

IMO this is a cockup which happened to occur near Headline's pub date, not a carefully orchestrated campaign.