First published 2012
Jeanette Winterson returns to the painful memories she thought she had left behind. Her adoptive mother, a religious fanatic who kept false teeth and a gun in her dresser while waiting for the end times, locked her out of the house night after night. Growing up in an industrial town in northern England, Winterson survived a childhood marked by zealotry and rejection. Years later, after building a successful writing career, her buried past resurfaces and drives her toward a breakdown. She embarks on a search for her biological mother, a quest that forces her to confront the trauma she had tried to escape. Through wit and fierce honesty, Winterson examines what it means to belong somewhere and to someone. This memoir chronicles her journey through madness and back again, exploring the fundamental human needs for love, identity, and home.
Genres: family-life, autobiography, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, personal-development
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, personal-journey, search-for-identity
Setting: England, Northern England
Period: 20th-century
230 pages · Hardcover · Grove Press
Content warnings: abuse, mental-illness