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Eccles Cakes: An Odd Tale of Survival
At the age of 18 months, Jonathan Fryer was adopted into a prosperous business family in Greater Manchester, but he felt like a fish out of water there. When his adoptive father started interfering with him sexually, his only dream was to get away as far as possible. The seeds were thus sown for him to take on the life of a foreign correspondent, beginning with his leaving home at the age of 18 to cover the Vietnam War.
Eccles Cakes is beautifully written, poignantly touching, disarmingly frank.
Michael Bloch
Eccles Cakes is beautifully written, poignantly touching, disarmingly frank.
Michael Bloch
198 pages, Paperback
Published June 28, 2016
7 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 30, 2021
I first met Jonathan, a foreign correspondent and broadcaster, at a Camden fundraiser at a friend's house for his campaign as a London Lib Dem EU parliamentary candidate in 2009. We met again in Kigali during the Christmas period and I was puzzled why he'd chosen to journey to an unknown city tout seul, but only pried after several further meetings. To my frustration, he referred me this memoir he had been working on while in Kigali, which I thought a bit rich given that I'd already paid to read several of his earlier books. But having read it, I now understand why he wouldn't have wanted to delve too deeply into the topic while we were enjoying the sun on the balcony of the National Liberal Club, waiting for others to join us. Deeply regret not having read this now during his lifetime.
An incredible life he lived within his first 19 years. We bury deep into the mind of an introverted boy damaged by sexual abuse and who for the first five years of his grammar school career, failed in most of his classes. Where he had space to develop independently, he flourished. And there were benefits to being born in a well-established family - trips with and without family abroad. And exposure to well-read people. Jonathan was simultaneously very privileged in material terms but underprivileged in his family life - two competing strands. Eventually his inner resilience, his compassion for those worse off than himself and his curiosity for cultures outside his own fueled him to become the intrepid explorer that was to be his calling.
An incredible life he lived within his first 19 years. We bury deep into the mind of an introverted boy damaged by sexual abuse and who for the first five years of his grammar school career, failed in most of his classes. Where he had space to develop independently, he flourished. And there were benefits to being born in a well-established family - trips with and without family abroad. And exposure to well-read people. Jonathan was simultaneously very privileged in material terms but underprivileged in his family life - two competing strands. Eventually his inner resilience, his compassion for those worse off than himself and his curiosity for cultures outside his own fueled him to become the intrepid explorer that was to be his calling.
November 15, 2016
I found this book relevant to our experience today in so many ways. How many powerless children, like Jonathan, suffer from sexual abuse inflicted by bullying men in positions of authority. The author well describes the complete innocent ignorance of the child as to what is being inflicted upon him by his stepfather, the imposed need for secrecy and then the growing sense of shame and confusion. How lost he must have felt when neither welfare personnel nor medicos would provide him with support.
Somehow, Jonathan does grow up and overcome many of the effects of that abuse and sets off to the war zone of Vietnam and beyond as a correspondent/student. What I found fascinating were his travels through places that have now changed beyond description – really they have ceased to exist as they were then. Cambodia, Burma, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan with beautiful women dressed in high fashion on the streets of Kabul, Syria – to name just a few of these changed countries.
It made me so sad; how so many vibrant and ancient cultures have been destroyed or radically changed in such a short time since the Vietnam war. Jonathan’s childhood abuse, for me, served as a metaphor for this destruction and inexorable change wrought in so many countries. Jonathan ends the book still yearning for his unknown mother as a means to understanding himself. I suspect many countries will yearn forever for the return of their mother cultures and their failure to evolve in the natural way of things.
Somehow, Jonathan does grow up and overcome many of the effects of that abuse and sets off to the war zone of Vietnam and beyond as a correspondent/student. What I found fascinating were his travels through places that have now changed beyond description – really they have ceased to exist as they were then. Cambodia, Burma, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan with beautiful women dressed in high fashion on the streets of Kabul, Syria – to name just a few of these changed countries.
It made me so sad; how so many vibrant and ancient cultures have been destroyed or radically changed in such a short time since the Vietnam war. Jonathan’s childhood abuse, for me, served as a metaphor for this destruction and inexorable change wrought in so many countries. Jonathan ends the book still yearning for his unknown mother as a means to understanding himself. I suspect many countries will yearn forever for the return of their mother cultures and their failure to evolve in the natural way of things.
September 26, 2017
Disturbed child risks all, but finds himself
Jonathan Fryer’s moving account of a disturbed child who comes of age is fraught with obstacles in his path to self-awareness. He must follow his best instincts to learn about the world, although it requires arduous travel and great risks, the biggest result of his journey is that he discovers himself. The hand he has drawn in life begins with a dysfunctional adoptive family: a self absorbed and aloof stepmother with a failing grip on reality, his harsh, spoiled and uncaring stepfather, one of multiple siblings who inherited the family-owned Fryer’s department store, and an older sister who is also adopted. His stepfather, moreover, cares principally about running a respectable son and inflicting upon him his unmet sexual desires. Indeed, it is his warden’s groping hand in his bedroom that repulses Jonathan from his last hope of finding a model for relating to other human beings and haunts him throughout his teenage years.
To escape his prison this disturbed child takes the only route available to him and dutifully attends the prestigious Manchester Grammar School, an hour’s commute across the city from his suburban town of Eccles, failing one subject after the next in the required curriculum. in his final year, the sixth form, he is at last permitted to select his courses. Only then, when he takes on geography, English, English literature and French, does he find inspiring instructors and the academic freedom to experience the give-and-take of the British tutorial system. He hits his stride and his academic career takes off, enabling him to sit for the Oxbridge exams and land a coveted berth at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Having struggled with the author through his difficult family beginnings as a disturbed child and his grammar school years, we find that the pace of the story picks up dramatically in the second half. Only when Jonathan’s self-absorbed parents take an extended trip abroad, leaving Jonathan to his own devices, can he plan his own tour of Europe and Asia and a return in time for his first term at Oxford. In preparing for his French, English and geography exams he has closely followed European politics, including he election of Dubcek in Czechoslovakia, and his ill-fated reforms in the hopeful Prague spring, and the May 68 events in France—student uprisings against traditional French values, symbolized by the 5th Republic of Charles de Gaulle and demonstrations against the low estate of French workers, which ground the country’s industrial economy to a halt. I saw the beginnings of this movement from my hotel balcony in 1965, where I stood transfixed and mystified, as compatriots of Danny the Red took over rue des Ecoles, damaged property and even overturned a car before my eyes. With nothing back home to lose, Jonathan plans a Grand Tour in the summer of 1968, with an eye toward becoming a foreign correspondent. He travels first by the Orient Express to Istanbul and then progresses over land to Afghanistan, Pakistan and by air to Ho Chi Minh City (later renamed Saigon), plopping himself right into the middle of the Vietnam war. When he is unexpectedly granted a visa, he makes a side trip to Kathmandu, Nepal, the 1960s mecca for hippies, drug experimenters and the “Make Love, Not War” generation. Since I had followed almost this same itinerary in 1965 as far east as Ankara, Turkey's capital city, and Goreme, the ancient city carved into Anatolia's mountainous. eroded badlands, I am familiar with the complexities and bureaucratic difficulties he had to overcome.
In his self-described “odd” odyssey, once this disturbed child has shaken off the petty values of his domineering father, Jonathan Fryer demonstrates his own impressive abilities. When he strikes out for an extended journey across two continents to a war zone, he shows bold vision, mastery of bureaucratic detail and youthful courage. In the process he finds his vocation, discovers his true sexual identity and, after a loveless, lonely childhood, finds a place alongside the rest of humanity. At last at age 19, he fits in his own skin for the first time.
I highly recommend this book to all fans of autobiography, geography and history.
-- Peter H. Green, Author of Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces.
Jonathan Fryer’s moving account of a disturbed child who comes of age is fraught with obstacles in his path to self-awareness. He must follow his best instincts to learn about the world, although it requires arduous travel and great risks, the biggest result of his journey is that he discovers himself. The hand he has drawn in life begins with a dysfunctional adoptive family: a self absorbed and aloof stepmother with a failing grip on reality, his harsh, spoiled and uncaring stepfather, one of multiple siblings who inherited the family-owned Fryer’s department store, and an older sister who is also adopted. His stepfather, moreover, cares principally about running a respectable son and inflicting upon him his unmet sexual desires. Indeed, it is his warden’s groping hand in his bedroom that repulses Jonathan from his last hope of finding a model for relating to other human beings and haunts him throughout his teenage years.
To escape his prison this disturbed child takes the only route available to him and dutifully attends the prestigious Manchester Grammar School, an hour’s commute across the city from his suburban town of Eccles, failing one subject after the next in the required curriculum. in his final year, the sixth form, he is at last permitted to select his courses. Only then, when he takes on geography, English, English literature and French, does he find inspiring instructors and the academic freedom to experience the give-and-take of the British tutorial system. He hits his stride and his academic career takes off, enabling him to sit for the Oxbridge exams and land a coveted berth at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Having struggled with the author through his difficult family beginnings as a disturbed child and his grammar school years, we find that the pace of the story picks up dramatically in the second half. Only when Jonathan’s self-absorbed parents take an extended trip abroad, leaving Jonathan to his own devices, can he plan his own tour of Europe and Asia and a return in time for his first term at Oxford. In preparing for his French, English and geography exams he has closely followed European politics, including he election of Dubcek in Czechoslovakia, and his ill-fated reforms in the hopeful Prague spring, and the May 68 events in France—student uprisings against traditional French values, symbolized by the 5th Republic of Charles de Gaulle and demonstrations against the low estate of French workers, which ground the country’s industrial economy to a halt. I saw the beginnings of this movement from my hotel balcony in 1965, where I stood transfixed and mystified, as compatriots of Danny the Red took over rue des Ecoles, damaged property and even overturned a car before my eyes. With nothing back home to lose, Jonathan plans a Grand Tour in the summer of 1968, with an eye toward becoming a foreign correspondent. He travels first by the Orient Express to Istanbul and then progresses over land to Afghanistan, Pakistan and by air to Ho Chi Minh City (later renamed Saigon), plopping himself right into the middle of the Vietnam war. When he is unexpectedly granted a visa, he makes a side trip to Kathmandu, Nepal, the 1960s mecca for hippies, drug experimenters and the “Make Love, Not War” generation. Since I had followed almost this same itinerary in 1965 as far east as Ankara, Turkey's capital city, and Goreme, the ancient city carved into Anatolia's mountainous. eroded badlands, I am familiar with the complexities and bureaucratic difficulties he had to overcome.
In his self-described “odd” odyssey, once this disturbed child has shaken off the petty values of his domineering father, Jonathan Fryer demonstrates his own impressive abilities. When he strikes out for an extended journey across two continents to a war zone, he shows bold vision, mastery of bureaucratic detail and youthful courage. In the process he finds his vocation, discovers his true sexual identity and, after a loveless, lonely childhood, finds a place alongside the rest of humanity. At last at age 19, he fits in his own skin for the first time.
I highly recommend this book to all fans of autobiography, geography and history.
-- Peter H. Green, Author of Radio: One Woman's Family in War and Pieces.
December 3, 2016
A delightfully open memoir of his childhood days. And it’s also highly detailed. You get to know what he had to eat/had to wear etc. as well as the more important and formative aspects of his early life – the distant step father and step mother and the rather strange relationships they had with each other. (Spoiler alert) You also get to hear about the weird sexual interference practiced on him by the step father and how it affected him.
Written light fluent prose, it’s easy to read and gives you a very good insight onto a troubled childhood, and the adjustments to society he had to make in his teenaged years – coping with others at school and abroad on his first travels. I only wanted the book to extend beyond his boyhood and see how he managed to cope with life and make such a literary success of it.
I was surprised at how unlike it is to his usual books – among which are masterful biographies of Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas and Cristopher Isherwood – all these are really worth reading if you want to understand the characters.
Written light fluent prose, it’s easy to read and gives you a very good insight onto a troubled childhood, and the adjustments to society he had to make in his teenaged years – coping with others at school and abroad on his first travels. I only wanted the book to extend beyond his boyhood and see how he managed to cope with life and make such a literary success of it.
I was surprised at how unlike it is to his usual books – among which are masterful biographies of Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas and Cristopher Isherwood – all these are really worth reading if you want to understand the characters.
May 14, 2021
This book is an “ eye opener” for me. I attended Branwood school with Jonathan and his sister Hilary ( who incidentally has the exact same birth date as me), but I never knew about the abuse until now! I also didn’t know that they were both adopted. Harold Fryer owned the business “Fryers of Eccles” and was a greatly respected business man. How wrong everyone was! For me, this is a very interesting book!
May 6, 2021
A fascinating glimpse of a life
and how it was shaped by experiencing the richness of the world after the damage inflicted by an adoptive father
and how it was shaped by experiencing the richness of the world after the damage inflicted by an adoptive father
September 3, 2016
Out of Eccles
Like other books by Jonathan Fryer, histories and biographies, this book has elements of both but with a deeply heartbreaking personal story about the first nineteen years of Fryer’s life near Manchester, England. Adopted by Rosemary and Harold Fryer when he was in primary school, he always felt like an outsider in the family, and Rosemary responded to his questions about his biological mother by saying that she was no one special.
At age seven, Harold begins molesting Jonathan, his hand under Jonathan’s bed clothes “like a spider that has plump pink fingers instead of legs.” Jonathan has no one to talk to about what his adoptive father is doing. He is too young to understand. He’s confused. He feels a “burning inside me” that he cannot explain. He only knows that his father does not relate to children, including his sister Hilary, like “a normal father.” During the annual visit by a representative of the adoption agency, he is sent out to play in the garden.
Jonathan is bored and uninspired at Manchester Grammar School (“my mind was elsewhere, yet nowhere”). Other than caring for his sister, he fails to connect to the people around him (he would like to have an older brother so Harold would not come into his room). He’s bullied by other school boys. Suddenly one day, he realizes that Harold’s “fiddling” with him has something to do with sex. He learns that what has happened is “dirty and wrong.”
From 1961 until 1969 (when the book ends), Jonathan shows remarkable resilience in his teen years. He develops an interest in writing and collecting books, ornithology, and organizing charity garden parties. He begins to find friends, focuses his studies on geography, takes trips to North Wales, and thinks about traveling someday. He also begins over-eating, experiences depression, and recurring nightmares about escape and entrapment engulf him.
Even though Harold stops coming to his bedroom around the age of twelve or thirteen, fear, anxiety, revulsion, and hatred of Harold plague him. He continually wonders about his mother, and thinks that any woman who smiles at him could be her. He turns around his academic career when his school allows him to focus on favorites subjects. He passes his ‘O’-levels in English Language, French, Geography, History, Math, and Latin. As a result, he gains entrance to Oxford, and escapes Eccles to travel throughout the Far and Middle East before entering the university. He develops an interest in “liberal-minded” politics, and has decided to become a writer.
Anyone who sees Jonathan’s travel writing as separate from his personal journey misunderstands how inextricably he has woven his travels into his personal search for his true self, a mysterious process of holding on and letting go (trying to find somewhere in the world without a trace of Harold, and waking in the night with reminders of Harold triggered by what he sees). At the end of his journey, he knows that “one day I will learn what I really want…. And I know I will find out who my Mother is.”
Fryer’s style reminds me of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” without the long run on sentences—part autobiography, part history, infused with personal insights into human suffering. We are reminded that while human suffering is universal, pure evil is not. It is a beautiful, transporting book.
Like other books by Jonathan Fryer, histories and biographies, this book has elements of both but with a deeply heartbreaking personal story about the first nineteen years of Fryer’s life near Manchester, England. Adopted by Rosemary and Harold Fryer when he was in primary school, he always felt like an outsider in the family, and Rosemary responded to his questions about his biological mother by saying that she was no one special.
At age seven, Harold begins molesting Jonathan, his hand under Jonathan’s bed clothes “like a spider that has plump pink fingers instead of legs.” Jonathan has no one to talk to about what his adoptive father is doing. He is too young to understand. He’s confused. He feels a “burning inside me” that he cannot explain. He only knows that his father does not relate to children, including his sister Hilary, like “a normal father.” During the annual visit by a representative of the adoption agency, he is sent out to play in the garden.
Jonathan is bored and uninspired at Manchester Grammar School (“my mind was elsewhere, yet nowhere”). Other than caring for his sister, he fails to connect to the people around him (he would like to have an older brother so Harold would not come into his room). He’s bullied by other school boys. Suddenly one day, he realizes that Harold’s “fiddling” with him has something to do with sex. He learns that what has happened is “dirty and wrong.”
From 1961 until 1969 (when the book ends), Jonathan shows remarkable resilience in his teen years. He develops an interest in writing and collecting books, ornithology, and organizing charity garden parties. He begins to find friends, focuses his studies on geography, takes trips to North Wales, and thinks about traveling someday. He also begins over-eating, experiences depression, and recurring nightmares about escape and entrapment engulf him.
Even though Harold stops coming to his bedroom around the age of twelve or thirteen, fear, anxiety, revulsion, and hatred of Harold plague him. He continually wonders about his mother, and thinks that any woman who smiles at him could be her. He turns around his academic career when his school allows him to focus on favorites subjects. He passes his ‘O’-levels in English Language, French, Geography, History, Math, and Latin. As a result, he gains entrance to Oxford, and escapes Eccles to travel throughout the Far and Middle East before entering the university. He develops an interest in “liberal-minded” politics, and has decided to become a writer.
Anyone who sees Jonathan’s travel writing as separate from his personal journey misunderstands how inextricably he has woven his travels into his personal search for his true self, a mysterious process of holding on and letting go (trying to find somewhere in the world without a trace of Harold, and waking in the night with reminders of Harold triggered by what he sees). At the end of his journey, he knows that “one day I will learn what I really want…. And I know I will find out who my Mother is.”
Fryer’s style reminds me of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” without the long run on sentences—part autobiography, part history, infused with personal insights into human suffering. We are reminded that while human suffering is universal, pure evil is not. It is a beautiful, transporting book.
April 19, 2021
Courage. That is the word that kept recurring in my mind as I read this powerful insight into Jonathan Fryer's troubled childhood. Courage in writing it. Courage in dealing with the abuse he suffered. Courage in throwing himself into the chaos and danger of a war zone on his own resources at the age of 19.
It is a shocking story but often also a heartwarming one as it shows how he triumphed over everything that was thrown at him. He never hides the grim reality of his life at home but skilfully manages to avoid excessive self-pity by restricting it to the occasional flashback insight into his feelings at the time.
It is a brave, engaging and positive story of one man's escape from the sort of childhood no-one should ever have to suffer.
It is a shocking story but often also a heartwarming one as it shows how he triumphed over everything that was thrown at him. He never hides the grim reality of his life at home but skilfully manages to avoid excessive self-pity by restricting it to the occasional flashback insight into his feelings at the time.
It is a brave, engaging and positive story of one man's escape from the sort of childhood no-one should ever have to suffer.
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