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That's How It Was
I was just a girl and life offered only things I despised: houses, children, security, housework. I had to pass. I had to. I had to be different.' Paddy is illegitimate, the daughter of another Paddy -- an active member of the IRA who abandons her English mother, Louey, at her birth. This is the story of that mother -- frail, but with an indomitable spirit -- of that daughter -- and of their life together, seen through the clear eyes of Paddy as a child and adolescent. The working class life of wartime England is wonderfully evoked and the subtle changing relationship between Paddy and Louey is movingly conveyed.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
Maureen Duffy
63 books15 followersMaureen Patricia Duffy (born 21 October 1933) is a contemporary British novelist, poet, playwright, nonfiction author and activist.
Duffy's work often uses Freudian ideas and Greek mythology as frameworks.[1] Her writing is distinctive for its use of contrasting voices, or streams of consciousness, often including the perspectives of outsiders. Her novels have been linked to a European tradition of literature which explores reality through the use of language and questioning, rather than through traditional linear narrative.[2] James Joyce in particular, and Modernism in general, are significant influences on her fiction, as is Joyce Cary.[3] "Duffy has inspired many other writers and proved that the English novel need not be realistic and domestic, but can be fantastical, experimental and political."[1] Her writing in all forms is noted for her 'eye for detail and ear for language'[4] and "powerful intense imagery".[5]
Duffy's work often uses Freudian ideas and Greek mythology as frameworks.[1] Her writing is distinctive for its use of contrasting voices, or streams of consciousness, often including the perspectives of outsiders. Her novels have been linked to a European tradition of literature which explores reality through the use of language and questioning, rather than through traditional linear narrative.[2] James Joyce in particular, and Modernism in general, are significant influences on her fiction, as is Joyce Cary.[3] "Duffy has inspired many other writers and proved that the English novel need not be realistic and domestic, but can be fantastical, experimental and political."[1] Her writing in all forms is noted for her 'eye for detail and ear for language'[4] and "powerful intense imagery".[5]
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 7, 2023
A five-star read! I had no intentions of reading this from cover to cover yesterday, but that is what I did. One of those books you can’t put down, and when it was done, I was sad to say goodbye to the central protagonist in the book, Paddy. 🙂 🙃
It is labeled as fiction but it’s an autobiography of the author. The book is about Paddy and her mother, Louie, and a number of other people who were part of her growing up, including a stepfamily (her mother married after several years of being a single mother). Paddy tells the story and we go along with Paddy from when she is a little tyke to when she is 14. Time period is pre-World War II, during the war and shortly afterwards in England. The mother has tuberculosis. Paddy knows at a very young age she wants to move on past the mandatory education back then, but she can only pursue higher education by winning a scholarship and it has to pay for all of her expenses because her family is poor, and she could not go without the scholarship. It’s written as a coming-of-age memoir. ‘Angela’s Ashes’ by Frank McCourt comes to mind.
Doris Lessing reviewed this book in 1962 and praised the author’s “emotional courage, a freshness that creates the world of her childhood and adolescence so that one can feel, smell and taste it.” (I’d like to read her full review but I cannot find it!)
The writing was superb. Here is a brief example...I chuckled at this...her friend Cretia is being baptized and after being dunked in the water Cretia comes out to get a towel from Paddy (they are both about 10 years old....):
• Paddy: Are you all right?
• Cretia: Yes, yes. Oh, Paddy, it was wonderful. When he pushed me under I ‘it me ‘ead on the side and I nearly fainted.
• Paddy: I rubbed vigorously. She was still dazed but whether from conviction or concussion I couldn’t be sure.
Please put this on your TBR list! It is available at the Internet Archive (free). 🙂
Note:
• The autobiographical novel made it into a lost compiled by Carmen Callil and Colm Toibin ...The Modern Library: The Two Hundred Best Novels in English Since 1950. Published January 1, 2011 https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Library...
• She published a snippet of the book in Lucifer, the King’s College London student literary periodical, June 1955, pages 3-5. See: https://www.strandlines.london/series... She got her bachelor of arts from King’s College London. A classmate of hers was B.S. Johnson (who wrote among other works ‘The Unfortunates’, an excellent and uniquely constructed novel...never come across another book like it!).
Reviews:
• https://lipsticksocialist.wordpress.c...
• http://thebluelantern.blogspot.com/20...
It is labeled as fiction but it’s an autobiography of the author. The book is about Paddy and her mother, Louie, and a number of other people who were part of her growing up, including a stepfamily (her mother married after several years of being a single mother). Paddy tells the story and we go along with Paddy from when she is a little tyke to when she is 14. Time period is pre-World War II, during the war and shortly afterwards in England. The mother has tuberculosis. Paddy knows at a very young age she wants to move on past the mandatory education back then, but she can only pursue higher education by winning a scholarship and it has to pay for all of her expenses because her family is poor, and she could not go without the scholarship. It’s written as a coming-of-age memoir. ‘Angela’s Ashes’ by Frank McCourt comes to mind.
Doris Lessing reviewed this book in 1962 and praised the author’s “emotional courage, a freshness that creates the world of her childhood and adolescence so that one can feel, smell and taste it.” (I’d like to read her full review but I cannot find it!)
The writing was superb. Here is a brief example...I chuckled at this...her friend Cretia is being baptized and after being dunked in the water Cretia comes out to get a towel from Paddy (they are both about 10 years old....):
• Paddy: Are you all right?
• Cretia: Yes, yes. Oh, Paddy, it was wonderful. When he pushed me under I ‘it me ‘ead on the side and I nearly fainted.
• Paddy: I rubbed vigorously. She was still dazed but whether from conviction or concussion I couldn’t be sure.
Please put this on your TBR list! It is available at the Internet Archive (free). 🙂
Note:
• The autobiographical novel made it into a lost compiled by Carmen Callil and Colm Toibin ...The Modern Library: The Two Hundred Best Novels in English Since 1950. Published January 1, 2011 https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Library...
• She published a snippet of the book in Lucifer, the King’s College London student literary periodical, June 1955, pages 3-5. See: https://www.strandlines.london/series... She got her bachelor of arts from King’s College London. A classmate of hers was B.S. Johnson (who wrote among other works ‘The Unfortunates’, an excellent and uniquely constructed novel...never come across another book like it!).
Reviews:
• https://lipsticksocialist.wordpress.c...
• http://thebluelantern.blogspot.com/20...
March 10, 2015
Oh god, my HEART. What a gorgeous and sad little book. I picked it up for the working-class childhood + lesbian-coming-of-age elements, but really, it is just an incredibly moving tribute to a truly extraordinary mother. If I ever get to teach my "Mothers & Daughters" dream course, this will definitely be on the syllabus.
March 3, 2017
An engrossing read about a tubercular single mother's love for her daughter and commitment to her child's escape from poverty through education. Some idiomatic use of English and cultural references as well as occasionally fuzzy writing made a few early parts of the novel challenging. However, once I was a third of the way into the book, I found it hard to put down. Worthwhile.
August 29, 2017
My favorite book. The best depiction of a mother and child relationship ever written. It will either fill you with warm nostalgia or the sadness of what you never had v
August 10, 2011
This is a delightful coming of age story that takes place in London during the war. Paddy and her mother, Louey, survive abandonment, poverty, and a step family. Louey sacrifices everything she has to educate her daughter. I enjoyed every minute of it!
December 26, 2018
Then they'd put me in a home for good, and everyone'd feel sorry for me, but I wouldn't stay. I'd run away and live wild in the woods on nuts and honey, or keep a goat on the bare back of the downs. I'd drink the milk and make cheese. Can you make butter out of goat's milk? And when there was a kid I'd kill it and roast it and make clothes out of its skin. I'd be tall and strong and run a mile without getting out of breath and I'd know everything about everything and no one would have to teach me. I watched myself, lonely and magnificent, striding down the years. Then the sky warped suddenly and the lightning ripped it open. Rain began to fall in big spattering drops leaving dark stains as large as pennies on the grey pavement... I pulled my coat up over my head and ran...
A story as often retold as any: the headstrong, precocious daughter of the grey industrial wasteland battles the brick wall of banality she encounters everywhere. But when done with unassailable credibility-- the cinders and grit that make a bicycle fall worse, the damp musk inside the crowded tram in the rain, the harsh word dropped by a thoughtless stepfather-- it all feels absolutely true. And like many heroines of similar tales, little Patricia Mary Mahoney endures a patchwork upbringing, moving through boarding rooms, attics, and the Blitz with her single mother, who finally lands them in an ill-advised second marriage.
Author Maureen Duffy deftly takes us from the fanciful younger protagonist, lost in her swirl of discovery and disappointment-- to the adolescent, the voracious reader, somehow both skeptic and dreamy teenager. Who by turns begins to doubt all that prevailing wisdom she's been fed:
… But I was apprehensive. I knew they'd try to convert me again and something about their narrow fanatical happiness repelled me. I had decided to be an agnostic, and kept my eyes open during prayers at school and only sang those parts of the hymns which didn't seem to contradict reason...
It was the era of the Angry Young Man, the Kitchen Sink drama, the grim postwar period of Austerity. Rationing and shortages, a nation digging out. An affecting and realistic read, for all of the girlish bewilderment of the heroine, the feuds and crushes of adolescence.
Recommended.
A story as often retold as any: the headstrong, precocious daughter of the grey industrial wasteland battles the brick wall of banality she encounters everywhere. But when done with unassailable credibility-- the cinders and grit that make a bicycle fall worse, the damp musk inside the crowded tram in the rain, the harsh word dropped by a thoughtless stepfather-- it all feels absolutely true. And like many heroines of similar tales, little Patricia Mary Mahoney endures a patchwork upbringing, moving through boarding rooms, attics, and the Blitz with her single mother, who finally lands them in an ill-advised second marriage.
Author Maureen Duffy deftly takes us from the fanciful younger protagonist, lost in her swirl of discovery and disappointment-- to the adolescent, the voracious reader, somehow both skeptic and dreamy teenager. Who by turns begins to doubt all that prevailing wisdom she's been fed:
… But I was apprehensive. I knew they'd try to convert me again and something about their narrow fanatical happiness repelled me. I had decided to be an agnostic, and kept my eyes open during prayers at school and only sang those parts of the hymns which didn't seem to contradict reason...
It was the era of the Angry Young Man, the Kitchen Sink drama, the grim postwar period of Austerity. Rationing and shortages, a nation digging out. An affecting and realistic read, for all of the girlish bewilderment of the heroine, the feuds and crushes of adolescence.
Recommended.
January 18, 2014
A starkly told story of the relationship between mother and child, framed through a wonderful evocation of the working-class life of wartime England. What makes this a little different is the frankness (especially for something released in the early-60s) of the narrator's emergent understanding of her own sexuality through teenagehood.
In many respects this is a bleak little book. The mother's struggles with TB, abandonment and subsequent ill-fated marriage makes for decidedly unglamorous reading. As such, it's difficult to become too emotionally involved with anyone featured (it'd be far too draining). That said, it's a well drawn series of portraits of a loving - if someone cloying and unhealthy - bond between mother and daughter.
In many respects this is a bleak little book. The mother's struggles with TB, abandonment and subsequent ill-fated marriage makes for decidedly unglamorous reading. As such, it's difficult to become too emotionally involved with anyone featured (it'd be far too draining). That said, it's a well drawn series of portraits of a loving - if someone cloying and unhealthy - bond between mother and daughter.
June 14, 2018
Very different to the only other Duffy I’ve read (‘Love Child’) but just as striking. This novel works as an excellent memoir of a working-class childhood, a lesbian bildungsroman and, most of all, an insanely beautiful story of the love between a mother and her daughter. (If you liked this, I recommend Sybille Bedford’s ‘Jigsaw’.)
January 19, 2020
Beautifully written story of a mother and her sacrifices to give her daughter a better life. Kind of a hazy read - like watching an old black and white movie that hasn't been digitized.
June 12, 2024
This was a lovely, thoughtful and emotive autobiography about Maureen Duffy’s experience growing up in war/ post war working class England. If you’re looking for a beautifully written, gently emotive and interesting story I would highly recommend!
More below:
It was really interesting to understand more about what that experience must’ve been like growing up in those times as working class, but mostly I loved how she depicted the love and bond between her and her mother who go through so much together.
As a fan of her poetry, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book but I thought this was really gently and beautifully written, with many little stories interwoven into one. As expected as a great poet, the descriptions (of physical things and emotional) were really perceptive.
I’m surprised why this book isn’t more well known!
More below:
It was really interesting to understand more about what that experience must’ve been like growing up in those times as working class, but mostly I loved how she depicted the love and bond between her and her mother who go through so much together.
As a fan of her poetry, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book but I thought this was really gently and beautifully written, with many little stories interwoven into one. As expected as a great poet, the descriptions (of physical things and emotional) were really perceptive.
I’m surprised why this book isn’t more well known!
November 18, 2023
Wow, this was really great. This novel is about a working-class girl in the 1930s and '40s and her close relationship with her mother who has TB. Although it's a novel it's incredibly true-to-life and reads as autobiographical. And it's very much a novel written by a poet. It's also one of my other favorite kinds of stories, the story of a young girl growing up to be a great artist. It's also yet another of my favorite kinds of stories, queer coming of age.
At first Paddy and her unwed mother Louey live in poverty in a city by the sea but then they move to the country (still to live in poverty of course) and Louey marries because she thinks it will make it possible for Paddy to go to secondary school. It's pre-free secondary schooling, so if Paddy doesn't a) pass the test and b) earn a scholarship, she can't go.
I really, really relate to the ending of the book
Maureen Duffy is still alive, aged 90! I hope she is living in splendor and basking in the appreciation of the world.
At first Paddy and her unwed mother Louey live in poverty in a city by the sea but then they move to the country (still to live in poverty of course) and Louey marries because she thinks it will make it possible for Paddy to go to secondary school. It's pre-free secondary schooling, so if Paddy doesn't a) pass the test and b) earn a scholarship, she can't go.
I really, really relate to the ending of the book
Maureen Duffy is still alive, aged 90! I hope she is living in splendor and basking in the appreciation of the world.
January 20, 2023
a beautiful story about a single mother and her daughter that captures their changing relationship over the years as they stick together through poverty, illness and the challenges of living in war-time england.
September 3, 2023
Evocative story.
November 25, 2024
Coming of age autobiographical fiction with similarities to My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. A very sweet re-telling of Paddy's childhood from 1930-1940s England.
Book club read #1
Book club read #1
September 21, 2025
Evocative story.
March 22, 2018
Absolutely love this book. Beautiful depiction of life in England in the 1940's, and of life as a poor daughter of a single mother. Further, this amazingly honest and loving tale of the bond between a mother with chronic tuberculosis and her cherished daughter explains what life was like before there was a cure for, or even effective treatment of, this terrible disease. This is an eye-opening study of a time few know.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews