What do you think?
Rate this book
Switchback: An Inner and Outer Journey
This memoir explores the beginnings of a long and eventful life, tracing inner and outer journeys that began in England on April Fool's Day 1937.
As a babe in her mother's arms, Gillian was soon travelling on the Orient Express to Istanbul just before the outbreak of World War II. Two happy years growing up in Istanbul were followed by a series of eventful and dangerous wartime journeys. With just her mother, a very young Gillian travelled through Palestine, Egypt, South Africa and the North and South Atlantic Oceans. They managed to slip through the German blockade of the United Kingdom and eventually found themselves back in a war-torn England with its air raids and severe rationing. Her life had become a roller coaster, or Switchback. After the war Gillain, now on her own, experienced the challenges of a journey back to England, boarding school, university and a growing social life.
Gillian shares many of her intense experiences and reflects on their long-term effects, using her expertise as a qualified Jungian analytical psychologist. These unique experiences include people, places and customs; mosques and minarets; donkeys and monkeys; stormy seas and pyramids; desert and iceberg; joy and danger; eight homes, seven schools and university.
As well as Gillian's Jungian theoretical background, this memoir is informed by her somewhat ecumenical Christian faith. These two perspectives have shaped her life so far and have helped to answer some of the whys, wheres, hows and whos of her journey.
Gillian's inner and outer journeys have been full of faith, challenge, interest, love, sorrow, danger and straight-out joy-with no regrets.
As a babe in her mother's arms, Gillian was soon travelling on the Orient Express to Istanbul just before the outbreak of World War II. Two happy years growing up in Istanbul were followed by a series of eventful and dangerous wartime journeys. With just her mother, a very young Gillian travelled through Palestine, Egypt, South Africa and the North and South Atlantic Oceans. They managed to slip through the German blockade of the United Kingdom and eventually found themselves back in a war-torn England with its air raids and severe rationing. Her life had become a roller coaster, or Switchback. After the war Gillain, now on her own, experienced the challenges of a journey back to England, boarding school, university and a growing social life.
Gillian shares many of her intense experiences and reflects on their long-term effects, using her expertise as a qualified Jungian analytical psychologist. These unique experiences include people, places and customs; mosques and minarets; donkeys and monkeys; stormy seas and pyramids; desert and iceberg; joy and danger; eight homes, seven schools and university.
As well as Gillian's Jungian theoretical background, this memoir is informed by her somewhat ecumenical Christian faith. These two perspectives have shaped her life so far and have helped to answer some of the whys, wheres, hows and whos of her journey.
Gillian's inner and outer journeys have been full of faith, challenge, interest, love, sorrow, danger and straight-out joy-with no regrets.
372 pages, Hardcover
Published November 20, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 19, 2022
Some people have had remarkably rich life experiences, and it’s gratifying when, like Gillian Clezy, they share them with the world. This is the first volume of her memoir, covering her childhood and youth through to the beginning of adulthood. It has several interwoven elements: her own memories, supplemented by her mother’s tape-recorded reminiscences; observations as an adult when she revisits some of the places from her past; and reflections drawn from her knowledge base as a Jungian analyst and from her Christianity.
A trip on the Orient Express took her mother and her through to Istanbul as war loomed. Then the war itself: she contrasts reports in Britain’s Movietone news, dark scenes wrapped in upbeat messaging, to the nightly repetitions of some current horror in today’s media. We have a little girl’s Istanbul memories of local cats, and of the mysteries of Islamic culture. A torrid escape via Palestine to South Africa, where apartheid was taking form (she returned in 1975, visiting Soweto and capturing its social tension, a year before the uprising).
From there she took ship toward unfamiliar England, heading slowly into the Atlantic, “beginning to feel its stormy power”. The little girls aboard got into play lifeboats; everyone wore life jackets all day. Then the deeper threat from the German blockade of Britain; the sight of another ship aflame at night, survivors brought aboard.
After that the only-relative safety of England. On the one hand, the new joy of fresh green countryside. On the other, an urban canal blocked by barbed wire and concrete gun emplacements – “utterly threatening in a strange and silent way. It was eerily bleak and I hated it.” Air raids. In the little girl’s drawings, palm trees and minarets gave way to aeroplanes and flattened houses.
Afterwards, the frozen-over Thames of 1947. Near Salisbury Cathedral, a “wooden, ancient hotel set high over the watercress-growing meadows”. There are glimpses of an old England that vanished during the postwar building boom; also a visit to the easily accessible Stonehenge.
Her character develops throughout. Her stresses and challenges did not detach her from mainstream institutions and values: boarding school was mostly a benign experience and her Christianity grew with her. The whole tale, despite its disparate elements, is firmly unified through her learning and her value system.
There is more information at https://www.switchbackmemoir.com/
A trip on the Orient Express took her mother and her through to Istanbul as war loomed. Then the war itself: she contrasts reports in Britain’s Movietone news, dark scenes wrapped in upbeat messaging, to the nightly repetitions of some current horror in today’s media. We have a little girl’s Istanbul memories of local cats, and of the mysteries of Islamic culture. A torrid escape via Palestine to South Africa, where apartheid was taking form (she returned in 1975, visiting Soweto and capturing its social tension, a year before the uprising).
From there she took ship toward unfamiliar England, heading slowly into the Atlantic, “beginning to feel its stormy power”. The little girls aboard got into play lifeboats; everyone wore life jackets all day. Then the deeper threat from the German blockade of Britain; the sight of another ship aflame at night, survivors brought aboard.
After that the only-relative safety of England. On the one hand, the new joy of fresh green countryside. On the other, an urban canal blocked by barbed wire and concrete gun emplacements – “utterly threatening in a strange and silent way. It was eerily bleak and I hated it.” Air raids. In the little girl’s drawings, palm trees and minarets gave way to aeroplanes and flattened houses.
Afterwards, the frozen-over Thames of 1947. Near Salisbury Cathedral, a “wooden, ancient hotel set high over the watercress-growing meadows”. There are glimpses of an old England that vanished during the postwar building boom; also a visit to the easily accessible Stonehenge.
Her character develops throughout. Her stresses and challenges did not detach her from mainstream institutions and values: boarding school was mostly a benign experience and her Christianity grew with her. The whole tale, despite its disparate elements, is firmly unified through her learning and her value system.
There is more information at https://www.switchbackmemoir.com/
Read
April 17, 2022This debut novel is exceptional.
I frequently turn to earlier works of favourite authors only to recognise the polish they have acquired as their works increase, Gillian begins her authorial career with great skill.
The story benefits, of course, from the amazing life she has led, but it is her skill in telling the story that resonates with the reader.
We follow Gillian from infancy to young adulthood, from quiet English lanes, to the souks of Cairo and the tactical dodging as her ship fought its way through the Nazi blockade.
All related with an unflinching honesty and willingness to examine the more difficult aspects of the relationships she formed with friends and family, as well as times of love and happiness.
In 2022, as we begin our own journeys out of the Covid wilderness, it is fascinating to compare and contrast another's experience of trauma. What effects did this have on Gillian the child?
Gillian is a woman of faith and she discusses her beliefs freely and explicitly, however it is evident that her belief includes all religions and refuses to be tied to one particular world view.
This is a charming book on so many levels, the historical perspective of a now vanished world, personal relationships, psychological growth.
I frequently turn to earlier works of favourite authors only to recognise the polish they have acquired as their works increase, Gillian begins her authorial career with great skill.
The story benefits, of course, from the amazing life she has led, but it is her skill in telling the story that resonates with the reader.
We follow Gillian from infancy to young adulthood, from quiet English lanes, to the souks of Cairo and the tactical dodging as her ship fought its way through the Nazi blockade.
All related with an unflinching honesty and willingness to examine the more difficult aspects of the relationships she formed with friends and family, as well as times of love and happiness.
In 2022, as we begin our own journeys out of the Covid wilderness, it is fascinating to compare and contrast another's experience of trauma. What effects did this have on Gillian the child?
Gillian is a woman of faith and she discusses her beliefs freely and explicitly, however it is evident that her belief includes all religions and refuses to be tied to one particular world view.
This is a charming book on so many levels, the historical perspective of a now vanished world, personal relationships, psychological growth.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews