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Full Circle
My body shook with the first kick to my naked body. His boots were heavy. First he kicked at my legs. Then my thighs. I curled in a ball to try to protect myself, his kicks penetrated me, the bones in my back and ribs felt like they were crumbling. I knew I was going to die... Screams echoed around the room as I tried to reach up to the window so I could jump out. Full Circle continues the life story of Jane Hersey which began with Breath in the Dark. It tells the harrowing true tale of a socially isolated young woman, who is neglected, physically and emotionally abused and living in poverty and deprivation. 'I was 16 years old when I left Manchester, struggling with emotional and related physical problems. Unable to hold down a job I found myself homeless. Coerced into a relationship I quickly became pregnant. Soon after my partner turned extremely violent. The emotional and physical abuse was relentless. After a life threatening beating I left in the middle of the night with my 18 month old baby. Refused help by the Homeless Families Department because I had lived out of Manchester for three years, I found myself homeless with a baby, at the mercy of unscrupulous people, forced into prostitution and sexually exploited. Eventually I found an attic flat for myself and my son in a dilapidated, vermin infested house. Three years later the Jewish Social Services got involved and offered me a decent flat on condition that I brought my son up in the Jewish faith, I agreed. I was 25 when I returned to the Jewish community. The first book in this autobiographical series was featured in The Jewish Telegraph, Ireland's Big Issue and Jane appeared on a wide range of radio shows from Newstalk to the BBC. It's been reviewed by the Madness and Literature Network (University of Nottingham) and included on the reading list for mental health nurses and recommended as a key text for clinicians, students, carers and parents.
178 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 2012
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About the author
Jane Hersey
6 books15 followersThe aim of my writing is to attempt to raise awareness of the enduring effects of severe and prolonged poverty and deprivation.
There are currently 175,000 children in the UK alone who act in the caring roll for a family member with a physical disability or illness. These children are known to the authorities and there is some support available. However, many children care for parent/s with mental health, alcohol and drug related problems and remain invisible to the system.
Marginalised and abused children are often overlooked even today, and risk becoming marginalised and abused adults who may never receive acknowledgment or respect for the immense physical and emotional burden they carry from childhood, or indeed have their full potential realised.
'The social, psychological and physical impact that caring for an adult can have on a child is starkly presented in Breath in the Dark.' University of Nottingham.
There are currently 175,000 children in the UK alone who act in the caring roll for a family member with a physical disability or illness. These children are known to the authorities and there is some support available. However, many children care for parent/s with mental health, alcohol and drug related problems and remain invisible to the system.
Marginalised and abused children are often overlooked even today, and risk becoming marginalised and abused adults who may never receive acknowledgment or respect for the immense physical and emotional burden they carry from childhood, or indeed have their full potential realised.
'The social, psychological and physical impact that caring for an adult can have on a child is starkly presented in Breath in the Dark.' University of Nottingham.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 27, 2013
In June last year I reviewed "Breath in the Dark", Jane Hersey's childhood autobiography. Jane was born into the ultra-orthodox Jewish community of Cheetham Hill in Manchester. Shortly after the birth of her younger brother her father abandoned the family, leaving three children in the care of their mother Annie. Annie simply couldn’t cope. She suffered from depression, asthma, diabetes and a compulsive eating disorder. She was addicted to prescription drugs and spent most of her life asleep on the sofa. When Jane was just six years old Annie depended on Jane to cash the National Assistance money, blag the doctor or the chemist to give her more amphetamines and to sell the second hand clothes that the community provided to pay for food.
Her childhood was non-existent. She was socially isolated, physically and emotionally neglected, and sexually abused by her father on the few occasions when she came into contact with him. By the time Jane was thirteen her mother had died and Jane was already showing symptoms of mental illness, including traits of OCD and Bulimia. She was regularly being fired from badly paid dead-end jobs partly because she had missed so much education that her work-skills were limited, but also because her social skills were almost non-existent. She simply didn't fit in anywhere. She was without a friend in the world.
Jane's first book ends abruptly when she is sixteen. Almost on a whim, she leaves the ultra-orthodox community of North Manchester to take a job as a chambermaid in a hotel in Windermere in the English Lake District. "Full Circle" continues her story from the age of 16 to the age of 28.
The cycle starts to repeat itself - she's fired from one job after another, fellow workers steal from her because she's too gullible to notice, her odd behaviour gets worse and worse. She's sexually abused and ends up living in Liverpool, married to the father of her son. It's a shotgun marriage, her husband regularly beats her to a pulp and his working class Catholic family are anti-Semites. Chillingly, her father-in-law describes seeing "The Angel of Death” in the bedroom, because. “She's a Jew." It's hard to believe that words like that were spoken in England in the 1970s.
So she flees the marital home in Liverpool and returns to Manchester with her baby son. At one point she takes a room in a brothel because she's too innocent to know why the landlady has taken her in. The landlady takes Jane's social security payments. Finally she returns to the ultra-orthodox community that had let her down so badly in the first place. The same cast of characters - relatives, social workers and community leaders who proved unable to help her in "Breath in the Dark" are still unable to come up with the help she needs. Things are complicated because she has "married out" to a gentile. This leads many members of the community to ostracise her, and one solution that is tried a few times by community leaders is to marry her off to old widowers who need to be taken care of. But her behaviour is too bizarre even for that plan to succeed.
She has sporadic contact with the mental health services. A middle aged Jewish psychiatrist describes her as being "of low intelligence". A more sympathetic psychologist explains to her "Someone shows you kindness and you reject them. Another rejects you and you smile.....You have things the wrong way round."Finally a psychiatrist gets to the bottom of Jane's problems. " She needs a mother. She's never been nurtured."
By the time Jane is twenty eight she's coping -just - by doing cleaning jobs and collecting glasses in pubs, and bringing up her son who's now at junior school. Then she meets the man she's now been married to for many years, and finally gets the consistent and regular psychiatric help she's needed for all of her troubled young life.
The psychotherapeutic community she is given a place in at the age of thirty recognises that she is far from being "of low intelligence" and shows her how to use writing as a form of therapy. "Breath in the Dark" and "Full Circle" are the result. They are both deeply disturbing and harrowing books to read, but they do show positive outcomes are possible even for the most distraught, abused and alienated children of our society. I wholeheartedly recommend these books.
Her childhood was non-existent. She was socially isolated, physically and emotionally neglected, and sexually abused by her father on the few occasions when she came into contact with him. By the time Jane was thirteen her mother had died and Jane was already showing symptoms of mental illness, including traits of OCD and Bulimia. She was regularly being fired from badly paid dead-end jobs partly because she had missed so much education that her work-skills were limited, but also because her social skills were almost non-existent. She simply didn't fit in anywhere. She was without a friend in the world.
Jane's first book ends abruptly when she is sixteen. Almost on a whim, she leaves the ultra-orthodox community of North Manchester to take a job as a chambermaid in a hotel in Windermere in the English Lake District. "Full Circle" continues her story from the age of 16 to the age of 28.
The cycle starts to repeat itself - she's fired from one job after another, fellow workers steal from her because she's too gullible to notice, her odd behaviour gets worse and worse. She's sexually abused and ends up living in Liverpool, married to the father of her son. It's a shotgun marriage, her husband regularly beats her to a pulp and his working class Catholic family are anti-Semites. Chillingly, her father-in-law describes seeing "The Angel of Death” in the bedroom, because. “She's a Jew." It's hard to believe that words like that were spoken in England in the 1970s.
So she flees the marital home in Liverpool and returns to Manchester with her baby son. At one point she takes a room in a brothel because she's too innocent to know why the landlady has taken her in. The landlady takes Jane's social security payments. Finally she returns to the ultra-orthodox community that had let her down so badly in the first place. The same cast of characters - relatives, social workers and community leaders who proved unable to help her in "Breath in the Dark" are still unable to come up with the help she needs. Things are complicated because she has "married out" to a gentile. This leads many members of the community to ostracise her, and one solution that is tried a few times by community leaders is to marry her off to old widowers who need to be taken care of. But her behaviour is too bizarre even for that plan to succeed.
She has sporadic contact with the mental health services. A middle aged Jewish psychiatrist describes her as being "of low intelligence". A more sympathetic psychologist explains to her "Someone shows you kindness and you reject them. Another rejects you and you smile.....You have things the wrong way round."Finally a psychiatrist gets to the bottom of Jane's problems. " She needs a mother. She's never been nurtured."
By the time Jane is twenty eight she's coping -just - by doing cleaning jobs and collecting glasses in pubs, and bringing up her son who's now at junior school. Then she meets the man she's now been married to for many years, and finally gets the consistent and regular psychiatric help she's needed for all of her troubled young life.
The psychotherapeutic community she is given a place in at the age of thirty recognises that she is far from being "of low intelligence" and shows her how to use writing as a form of therapy. "Breath in the Dark" and "Full Circle" are the result. They are both deeply disturbing and harrowing books to read, but they do show positive outcomes are possible even for the most distraught, abused and alienated children of our society. I wholeheartedly recommend these books.
April 15, 2013
This is a very well written book that was a quick read. The characters are well constructed and they along with the different locations are easy to visualize. The subject matter is hard to read but I came away with the reminder that you never know what someone is going thru. don't make assumptions, catty remarks and when possible do that random act of kindness. It is a book well worth reading!
I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads, and this is my honest opinion.
I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads, and this is my honest opinion.
October 21, 2014
I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book through Goodreads First Read program, so I thought I would share my thoughts (which were not required as a condition of receiving the book.) This book is the sequel to Jane Hersey's book Breathe in the dark. The first book is all about Jane and her life with an abusive and neglectful mother. When the first book ended I wasn't sure how this one would be able to be as interesting, however I was very wrong. The torment that Jane endured at the hands of her mother does not stop as she gets older. She eventually leaves she has a hard time keeping a job since she has no skills that she knows of and her husband has started abusing her in many different ways, each more terrible than the last. With no where to turn when he kicks her out in the middle of the night Jane is forced to do whatever it takes to put a roof over her and her baby's head, picking up small jobs here and there it never seems like its going to end for her. When her roommate forces her into prostitution in order to help pay her debts Jane has no idea how to say no or how to react so she goes with it as her life goes from bad to worse. This book was amazing and held my interest throughout I just had to see how things were going to play out for Jane. What I liked was even though Jane's life kept going from bad to worse she never gave up and she kept trying to make things better for her son. The writing in this book was fantastic with not an over saturation of details. What I liked the most was the ending since it was a memoir she didn't just end it saying that things were great, it was more along the lines of healing is a work in progress that she is striving towards.
August 29, 2019
I received this book from the author for review after reading and enjoying the first book, A Breath in the Dark. This book was just as heartbreaking as the first, but hopeful all the same, because you get to see the strength of the human spirit despite all that Jane endures. While reading I constantly think about how brave Jane Hersey is to have published these books. Do keep in mind that if you pick up this book, it is very dark, and can take some time to finish it because of that, but i highly suggest reading both Full Circle and a Breath in the Dark.
September 12, 2014
I am sorry to say that I just could not get into this book. I don't know if it's the darkness of the book or the fact that it's the sequel to another book and I haven't read it. I mean there were points in the beginning of this book that really needed to be cleared up from the last book or the reader would stay confused and that was me. Try as I might I just had to give up. I received this from the author through Goodreads for and honest review.
September 29, 2014
I won this book in a Goodreads competition so I have Jane Hersey to thank for my signed copy! an amazing sequel to the first book! I was amazed at the love and protection she displayed to her son despite her lack of being nurtured as a child and I like how even though she is older in this book, the manner of speech is still the same.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews