Judith Gurney's Blog
July 21, 2012
Pieces of Me
Hi to anyone reading this! I now have a Googlemail blog called Pieces of Me--and just received this comment on Pieces of Molly from a poet--‘I’ve just finished 'Pieces of Molly', and have read it with great enjoyment and admiration. It's so well written, not just at the level of the sentences, but in the way the perspective shifts. It's constantly engaging. It's also very evocative for me. Having grown up in the same period, though in a different setting (London suburbs), so much of what she describes is familiar - both the world of things, and the way relationships were handled (by silence).
It really ought to have a mainstream publisher, so that it gets a higher profile.’
Carole Satyamurti is a poet and sociologist, who lives and works in London. For many years she taught at the Tavistock Clinic, where her main academic interest was in the relevance of psychoanalytic ideas to an understanding of the stories people tell about themselves, whether in formal autobiography or in social encounters.
Well many mainstream published books don't get reviewed either- so all power to reviewers on Amazon and those authors who are 'outside' what is considered 'kosher'--maybe publishers will find themselves stranded as more people take to the web themselves...as Damien Walter wrote in the Guardian (20 April 2012 'are books & the inernet about to merge'?) 'EVERY TIME SOCIETY ADVANCES, IT FACES CHALLENGES FROM THOSE PEOPLE ECONOMICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THE PAST' ..well maybe we do stand on the threshold of one of the most revolutionary advances in human history--and looking backwards, Proust, Walt Whitman and Jane Austen were all self-published... all for now...
It really ought to have a mainstream publisher, so that it gets a higher profile.’
Carole Satyamurti is a poet and sociologist, who lives and works in London. For many years she taught at the Tavistock Clinic, where her main academic interest was in the relevance of psychoanalytic ideas to an understanding of the stories people tell about themselves, whether in formal autobiography or in social encounters.
Well many mainstream published books don't get reviewed either- so all power to reviewers on Amazon and those authors who are 'outside' what is considered 'kosher'--maybe publishers will find themselves stranded as more people take to the web themselves...as Damien Walter wrote in the Guardian (20 April 2012 'are books & the inernet about to merge'?) 'EVERY TIME SOCIETY ADVANCES, IT FACES CHALLENGES FROM THOSE PEOPLE ECONOMICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THE PAST' ..well maybe we do stand on the threshold of one of the most revolutionary advances in human history--and looking backwards, Proust, Walt Whitman and Jane Austen were all self-published... all for now...
June 22, 2012
Pieces of Molly by Judith Gurney
Hi to all readers and potential readers, I just had a marvellous comment from Richard Meier, poet & winner of Picador's Poetry Prize 2010, talking about the book's 'sublime writing' and hoping it will be entered for literary prizes.. but sadly most prize committees do not accept independently published books at the moment-nor incidentally do many national newspapers etc...This is particularly galling to me as I 've got an international publishing record in my own professional field see www.judithedwards.co.uk . Anyway at some point I think all independent authors need to mount a campaign to stop this prejudice so anyone in the same boat do get in touch with me--meanwhile enjoy your summer and hope you really enjoy all you read-including Pieces of Molly! I gurantee it will set the echoes going in your own mind about your own childhood...
May 17, 2012
Pieces of Molly by Judith Gurney
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Pieces of Molly, 25 April 2012
By
Solace Wales
This review is from: Pieces of Molly: An Ordinary Life (Paperback)
Pieces of Molly is a psychological thriller -- it just doesn't fall into the normal categories of that genre. Instead of featuring undercover spies or murder mysteries, it pursues the little mined psychological territory of childhood: the dynamics of how one progresses from the trauma of birth through a mix of irrational fears and delightful discoveries to becoming a person on the verge of adolescence.
Judith Gurney brings the particulars of her childhood alive: her involvement with chickens and exciting tractor rides along with her absorbing interaction with a peculiarly cold mother and an adoring father. At times her probing touches the rumblings of tectonic plates colliding beneath the apparently benign exterior her family presents to the world. The description is made more nuanced by the writer's ability to shift seamlessly from her point of view as a child into reflections of her adult self as she cares for her aging parents.
The book's subtitle is "an ordinary life." How is growing up on a largish farm in a rural England that no longer exists, with a family fraught with scandalous secrets, "ordinary?" It would seem quite the reverse, but as the reader accompanies Gurney in her personal exploration, the vast common ground of everyone's childhood emerges. Presented with such detailed recall, the reader is plunged into memories of similar experiences. We all share the fierce fears and jealousies along with the insights of childhood -- only few of us have reflected on them in such depth and even fewer have been able to write of them with such lucidity. It is the gripping drama of childhood itself that is "ordinary."
This book makes us remember our own childhoods, with its terrors, yes, but also with its wonderment. At one point Molly speaks of playing a game with infinity. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? I had a bucket with a picture of Contrary Mary on it, and she herself held a similar bucket. I stood in front of the central mirror, holding mine. Try as I would I couldn't make out the picture on her bucket, but I knew it was there, Contrary Mary and the bucket receding infinitely, like Alice getting smaller and smaller and ending up in a totally different dimension. . . Was someone infinitely larger than me, I wondered, holding a bucket with me as a picture on it?"
Molly's many questions remind us of the innate ability of a child's mind to ask ultimate questions, mathematical ones, and ones about the very nature of existence. A child's fresh responses to life are truly extraordinary, but their universality makes them ordinary. Don't miss the joy of revisiting these insights yourself.
Solace Wales
5.0 out of 5 stars Pieces of Molly, 25 April 2012
By
Solace Wales
This review is from: Pieces of Molly: An Ordinary Life (Paperback)
Pieces of Molly is a psychological thriller -- it just doesn't fall into the normal categories of that genre. Instead of featuring undercover spies or murder mysteries, it pursues the little mined psychological territory of childhood: the dynamics of how one progresses from the trauma of birth through a mix of irrational fears and delightful discoveries to becoming a person on the verge of adolescence.
Judith Gurney brings the particulars of her childhood alive: her involvement with chickens and exciting tractor rides along with her absorbing interaction with a peculiarly cold mother and an adoring father. At times her probing touches the rumblings of tectonic plates colliding beneath the apparently benign exterior her family presents to the world. The description is made more nuanced by the writer's ability to shift seamlessly from her point of view as a child into reflections of her adult self as she cares for her aging parents.
The book's subtitle is "an ordinary life." How is growing up on a largish farm in a rural England that no longer exists, with a family fraught with scandalous secrets, "ordinary?" It would seem quite the reverse, but as the reader accompanies Gurney in her personal exploration, the vast common ground of everyone's childhood emerges. Presented with such detailed recall, the reader is plunged into memories of similar experiences. We all share the fierce fears and jealousies along with the insights of childhood -- only few of us have reflected on them in such depth and even fewer have been able to write of them with such lucidity. It is the gripping drama of childhood itself that is "ordinary."
This book makes us remember our own childhoods, with its terrors, yes, but also with its wonderment. At one point Molly speaks of playing a game with infinity. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? I had a bucket with a picture of Contrary Mary on it, and she herself held a similar bucket. I stood in front of the central mirror, holding mine. Try as I would I couldn't make out the picture on her bucket, but I knew it was there, Contrary Mary and the bucket receding infinitely, like Alice getting smaller and smaller and ending up in a totally different dimension. . . Was someone infinitely larger than me, I wondered, holding a bucket with me as a picture on it?"
Molly's many questions remind us of the innate ability of a child's mind to ask ultimate questions, mathematical ones, and ones about the very nature of existence. A child's fresh responses to life are truly extraordinary, but their universality makes them ordinary. Don't miss the joy of revisiting these insights yourself.
Solace Wales
