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...

no no it's not writing about it

it's writing that she bought her a quick private termination in case the child changed her mind:

"We book a termination for first thing Monday morning. It?s private but we don?t dare wait for an NHS appointment. Her mood could change at any time."

It's awful, yes it upset me too. That and the LWT column about allowing her oldest son to assault her daughter and making her strip in front of him. Seriously depressing and deranged behaviour for an intelleigent woman.

Her slapping him, repeatedly, apparently for wanting to stay home & play guitar in the garden (or for not giving her the keys to lock him out???) which was what triggered the perforated eardrum smack in return, was pretty upsetting too.

Is it wrong to find his account of events more credible than hers?

oh totally mp, that adds an extra layer of horror to the situation. but actually i think writing about it, full stop, is bad enough. it's a monumental betrayal, even if at every point in the process her motives were pure.

the fact that they weren't makes it much worse, of course. not least for the girl, of course, because apart from the exposure of her private life she now knows she trusted someone who did not have her best interests at heart.

what was the thing with the stripping? i must've missed that LWT.

even the excerpt in the indy review, about a huge fight over the fact that on a hot day he wanted to wear jeans and thick socks, makes JM and her dh sound BONKERS.

why would they not have learned to not sweat the small stuff with three kids in the house?

I do think the abortion thing was meant to be horrendous (and the girl's mother did know about it because, iirc, she rang up Julie begging her to get her daughter to see sense). I think it is meant to show the lengths she was driven to on behalf of her son and I also feel that there is a certain honesty in admitting that you would wish away your teenage child's unborn baby - she admits to being relieved at having effectively killing her first grandchild (rough paraphrase of her words).

And the reviewer did find the book moving and felt that JM had the right to write (and publish) it.

It was one of her columns. It wasn't the oldest son it was the younger one, not sure if that makes it any better. Interestingly, in the columns Eddie (Jake) is portrayed as the nicer of the too - flaky but quite sweet, whereas the younger one, Jack (Raphael) comes across as really rather nasty.

"the LWT column about allowing her oldest son to assault her daughter and making her strip in front of him. Seriously depressing and deranged behaviour for an intelleigent woman."

lala, i very much agree with you, that it was an amazingly honest admission on her part. but it's the fact that it was in a column that her son already knew/suspected was about him, and a book that made it perfectly clear who it referred to.

she's a novelist. she shoulda kept it fictional.

God I must stop posting on this - it's like middle class eastenders.

Anyway, thing that struck me about some of it being fictional (like she says the 4 pubes thing is), is that anything major, like the abortion, you assume it is. And even if her children now say 'nah that bit and that bit there were her artistic licence' no one's going to believe them. So not only has she hijacked their actual teenage years, she's rewritten them to provide heightened dramatic tension.

And that Indie reviewer takes no account of the fact that it is largely Jake's story, not Julie's.

well they've fecking DELETED the columns now so you can't read it

basically she hears screaming in the street, opens her front door, finds eldest son lying on his sister pulling her head back by her hair, says she is wearing his tee-shirt, the daughter is released then WEIRDLY the mother tells her to take the shirt off, which she does, then the daughter throws it out the front door

then her mother calls her a 'stupid cow'

and that's.... it

which is extraordinarily baffling

gosh

Unless they did consent she doesn't have a legal right to publish this information. that's the bottom line. They could probably get a court order against their parents restraining them from publishing more about them if it is stuff not yet in the public domain. It is not impossible as a writer to write about thigns other than your children. I write loads and I manage to avoid it and if the children have been involved in anything public it is always with their consent. The girls both drove themselves back frmo university once because they wanted to be in some photo or other of the family but had they refused that would have been fine too.

"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself."

Comes to mind.

tbh i've probably scuppered my career at various points when i've refused to write those navel-gazing family columns. i just couldn't imagine turning my life inside out like that.

I agree Aitch. DH did one for a while when the children were tiny, but it was more about him being a Dad than the children and he gave up before DD1 started school. I don't think he ever wrote anything remotely personal or embarrassing in them though.

it's not that i'd have an issue with writing 'here are the funny and cute things my lovely dd1 says', it's just that i think they're not that good, by and large (i'm sure you're dh's was excellent ). so if i was going to do it, i'd have to really reveal something other. and i couldn't. cos i'd want to be married and have friends after it, iykwim?

Ohgodohgodohgod, journalism will eat itself.

nirpal's no journalist. rofl

Oh my lord - it's spiralling into a vortex. Do you think all of them will get sucked in and spat out in Chat Weekly land or something. I think the broadsheets have devoted quite enough time to this now.

Was Liz thing the one on R4 yesterday morning?

Somebody mentioned an article by some bloke about his divorce & whether that was legit to be written about & somebody else (another female) said no that was wrong too which seemed to shut up the ones in the studio...I didn't know who any of them were & I was in the car so couldn't look 'em up on google & I'd forgotten by the time I got home but honestly, who are these people & what are they on?

I'm wondering whether she got the consent of the girlfriend to talk about the abortion? Or her parents? Can you imagine being an ex-girlfriend of Jake Myerson now, or her parents?

I thought this all might have died down by now but I was forgetting the small fact that we are actually going to have all the reviews of the book now that it is actually out.

I would be holed up on a remote island somewhere with my family trying to make amends if I had transgressed this much as a parent/human being.

I didn't hear it Ponders but yes, probably. The only thing in Liz Jones' favour is that her ex is probably as narcissistic as she is and he's an adult. But equally navel-gazing as Julie Tiresome