|
|---|
Thursday, November 13, 2008
title:
Wife In the North
author: Judith O’Reilly
genre: memoir/nonfiction
I received a copy of Wife in the North to read and review here at my blog and I am really enjoying this book! I love the way Judith O’Reilly writes, she grabs your attention and doesn't let go.
It's the story of how she and her husband move from London out to the country with thier two small sons and a baby on the way. There's so many great passages, i've had to get mark my favorites with post-its, so I can go back and re-read them.
I'm glad I got a copy of this book, it's really interesting and unexpected. Not that I expected this to be a boring read, but I didn't expect to like it so much or for it to be so funny and moving.
Has that ever happened to you? You begin to read a book not really knowing what to expect, and are pleasantly surprised?
Here's a bit of an article Judith O’Reilly wrote pertaining to her book:
Arriving in the middle of the countryside fresh from the city with a young family, it is fair to say I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I grew up in the city; the countryside was something you saw on TV if there was nothing on another channel. As an adult, I believed the city to be my right, my natural home. You might spend a week in a holiday cottage somewhere green, and usually wet, but that was as far as it went. The countryside, my dear, was another place.
My husband and I spent 17 years working in London. With two young children and another on the way, I finally gave in to his pleading and agreed to move to the North-East coast of England. We followed the dream, but living the dream is not necessarily easy. For a long time, I found it isolating. Living four kilometers from the nearest village took getting used to. Particularly when my husband was back at his desk in London for weeks at a time. At dusk, the children asleep, I walked out of the whinstone and sandstone cottage in a row of what used to be farm labourers' cottages -- the other cottages are holiday homes and empty most of the year. I looked out onto pastures where sheep and cattle graze; in the distance, a narrow blue-grey strip of sea and a lighthouse on the rocky islands off the coast. I waited for the lighthouse to blink, for the bats to notice me, swoop down and then away. I thought: "Ok, so this is it then?"
©2008 Judith O’Reilly
Here's a trailor for the book *warning* there is a curse word in one part.
