The Amazingly Astonishing Story

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Mae cyfrol o atgofion Lucy Gannon yn gofnod clasurol o ddwy flynedd ar bymtheg gyntaf merch o ddosbarth gweithiol sy'n gorchfygu sawl rhwystr wrth ganfod ei hun - marwolaeth ei mam, magwraeth gaeth o fewn y ffydd Gatholig, teulu milwrol, camdriniaeth a llysfam greulon. Daw achubiaeth drwy addysg a blynyddoedd y 1960au, yn cynnwys cyfarfyddiad byr â'r Beatles.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Deeply funny and deeply sad, this memoir is a frank look into a child's tumultuous mind, a classic story of a working-class girl growing up in the sixties. Her Catholic upbringing, a father torn between daughter and new wife, her irreverent imagination and determination to enjoy life, mean this really is an amazing story (including meeting the Beatles).

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

In-stock items will be dispatched within 3 business days, usually by Royal Mail Tracked 48. For pre-orders, we’ll dispatch within 3 business days of receiving the item from our supplier.

Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

After leaving the army Gannon became a social worker and then a nurse before turning to writing. She is the author of 8 plays and 18 tv dramas or series, including 'The Best of Men', 'Soldier Soldier', 'Peak Practice', 'Bramwell', and 'Dad'. She won the Richard Burton Award for New Playwrights and has been writer in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Gannon is currently developing scripts and mentoring writers for BBC Wales and contemplating two further volumes of memoir. She lives on the coast, in the far west of Ceredigion.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

At first I thought I wasn’t going to like this book. There is the rather naff title for a start, and the shockin’ pink cover, and the breathless style which I took to be faux-naïf . But a few pages in, I began to understand what Lucy Gannon is doing in this childhood memoir, and from then on I found it completely absorbing. The author is, of course, a well-known playwright and TV dramatist ( Soldier Soldier , Peak Practice , Dad ) and what she is doing here is dramatizing her childhood, seeing the world through the thoughts and feelings of a little girl as she tries to cope with her shattered, loveless world, until her teenage years when she finally frees herself. Because it is a dramatization, there is a good deal of direct speech, far more (I’d say) than anyone could possibly remember from their childhood. All the events in the book surely happened, but they have been recreated with a dramatist’s skill into a fully-rounded reconstruction of what it was like to have been that young Lucy Gannon. Her story starts with the death of her mother from a brain tumour when Lucy is five or six. It is a shattering event and Lucy is sent to live with her Aunt Nelly and Uncle Arthur. Nelly is kind and loving, but there are hints, never fully expressed, that Arthur sexually abuses his niece, adding to the trauma of her mother’s death. Just when the reader thinks things couldn’t get worse, a year after his wife’s death her father remarries. Things go well for a while, but when Norah, the stepmother, has a baby who dies after a few weeks, Lucy’s nightmare of a childhood really begins. Norah resents Lucy, resents the fact that she is alive and her baby is dead, and this rapidly turns into a kind of psychological cruelty as Lucy is shunted aside, cold-shouldered, and diminished in her own eyes until she comes to believe that she is ugly and unlovable. There are brighter moments outside the loveless house. Her father, a professional soldier, is Irish, the family Roman Catholic, and Lucy is consoled by the kindly, realist priest Father Sullivan. Nonetheless, her life is cruelly devoid of affection until after the 11-plus she goes to a convent school in Bath where she makes friends and starts to enjoy herself almost for the first time. She is, not surprisingly, something of a ‘problem child’ and gets into all kinds of scrapes, but her teachers are understanding of her, and Lucy cannot wait to get the morning train to Bath and to school, where she excels at English and idolises her English teacher. One event from those years stands out. It is the mid-1960s and Lucy is a fan of the Beatles, especially John Lennon. Looking out of the window, she and a friend are amazed to see the Beatles unloading equipment from a van right outside the school. They skip class, and Lucy has a brief encounter with her hero, who is very decent, going out of his way to chat with her. O-levels loom, and Lucy does outstandingly well in English but her father and stepmother frustrate her desire to go on to do A-levels, and almost in desperation she decides to join the Army (following her father, and her older brother Martin). Army life, with its camaraderie, suits her down to the ground, and she ends up in the Military Police, like Martin. There is a postscript. It is 1980 and Lucy is married with a little girl of her own. She is listening to the radio when the murder of John Lennon is announced, and there in the kitchen she thinks back to the time she met him and he was kind to her. The past is the past, it seems so long ago and she is (almost) a different person now. It is the end of a compelling, haunting memoir which readers will find hard to put down.