7 Jul 2010

Ugly by Constance Briscoe

'I handed my school photograph to my mother.  She stared from the photograph to me.  'Lord, sweet Lord.  How come she so ugly.  Ugly.  Ugly'

These cruel words are just the beginning.  Constance's mother systematically abused her daughter, both physically and emotionally, throughout her childhood.   Regularly beaten and starved, the child was so desperate she took herself off to Social Services and tried to get taken into care.  When Constance was thirteen, her mother simply moved out leaving her daughter to fend for herself; there was no gas, no electricity and no food.  

But somehow Constance found the courage to survive her terrible start in life.   This is her heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant story'


At just over 400 pages long, this book only took me two days to read.  I could not put it down.  The type of abuse that Constance had to put up with throughout her childhood was so horrendous.  After I had read this book I tried to think about what I would have done if I was in the same situation and, to be honest, I simply couldn't even imagine what I would do.  This book was a very emotional book to read but worth it. 

This book is the first of two books which tell us the true story of Constance Briscoe.   'Ugly' is mainly telling us what happened when she was a child and the next book called 'Beyond Ugly' is continuing the story after she leaves school.  I am going to start that one next..

10 out of 10

4 comments:

Karen & Gerard said...

Sounds kind of like "A Child Called It" and "Glass Castle." Have you read either of these?

Debra's Book Cafe said...

I have not read those but have just searched for them on Amazon and they look really good... I might have to take a wander to a book shop soon..... Have you read them? Would you recommend?

Anonymous said...

I read the 'Glass Castle' and 'A child Called it'. Both very emotional stories. Although, i must say, the Glass Castle isn't very similar to "Ugly". But i greatly recommend both. I truly can not wait to read "ugly". ��

Anonymous said...

One after another these days we are seeing high profile memoirs proven to be falsified. Some of these misery memoirs are just lies