Review
She 'creates the world of her childhood and adolescence so that one can feel, smell, and taste it' Doris Lessing 'Maureen Duffy is one of the few British writers of fiction of real class' Financial Times 'An experienced, prolific novelist; nothing she writes can fail' Daily Telegraph
Product Description
'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.
