Going Home is my first book. It was written as a homage to my mother’s largely unknown early life, and although it was not biographical, it was a way of marking her place and time especially in London’s East end where she – and I – grew up. It is a multigenerational tale and follows the story of Ruth’s life through the eyes of her family as well as her own.
Ruth is a young Jewish girl growing up in London’s East End. Her future is mapped out for her, working as a book-keeper in old man Schwartz’s emporium. Then Frank, a market-stallholder in Petticoat Lane, turns her head and changes her life, and the lives of four generations…Going Home tells the stories of these lives in their own voices. All bear the scars of that chance meeting in 1949, and they must take their own journeys… find their own way home. Some real characters and events, which help define the historical setting of the book, are included in passing. The places in these pages are real and as I remember them, but their inhabitants bear no resemblance to real people, living or dead. While the characters in Going Home are not real, in telling their stories I hope I have given my mother her voice and that wherever she is now, she feels at peace and at home.
Review:
26 February 2015
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
As a trans-generational text this was an enjoyable historically-related novel with, as the author quotes, “the past and present merging into one.” The characters are clearly and realistically defined as are both their context and their sense of themselves though personalised interpretations. I would suspect that there are strong biographical and ethnographic elements associated with the age and experiences of the author over his own lifetime as well as ‘perhaps’ his own experiences at Bretton Hall to become a teacher of drama! His astute understanding of the trauma of adolescence was particularly strong and would be useful for trainee teachers to read. The reflexive nature of this book emphasised the nature of kinship and the importance of family and was an exceptional read, despite its incongruous ending.
Published in 2014 by Amazon Media in paperback and e-book formats.
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BARRY UPTON AUTHOR 