{"id":4643,"date":"2019-02-17T16:45:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T06:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=4643"},"modified":"2019-02-17T20:30:54","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T10:30:54","slug":"bad-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=4643","title":{"rendered":"BAD BLOOD"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Book group starts in ten days time – but the CAE was slow sending out the boxes –\u00a0 and I only picked this up on Thursday. I finished yesterday!
\nThis is an amazing feat, since all of last year I struggled to get through almost everything. And I didn’t read Bad Blood<\/em> quickly for any other reason than that I was absolutely loving it.
\nAnd – further boast here – I chose it, as well. This is the first non-fiction title I’ve read with my book group.
\nWe usually read novels, and last year’s – all well reviewed, or\u00a0 shortlisted for major awards –\u00a0 were unremittingly grim. (Though I must add that one of the potentially grimmest of them all – The Woman Who Walked into Doors<\/em> by Roddy Doyle –\u00a0 turned out to be a revelation, much enjoyed, and bizarrely funny at times).
\nI chose Lorna Sage’s memoir not only because I felt like a change from fiction, but because it ticked so many boxes in my personal checklist. Post-war Britain (actually, Wales) in all its pinched, mean austerity: small village, with beautifully described farm and countryside and cast of characters: gloomy vicarage, philandering vicar: a family that is gothic in its madness and dysfunction and destructiveness: a young girl struggling against society and family and fate and school (with the exception of a few heroic, helpful female teachers) to be her real, clever self. And she succeeds. Yes, it’s non-fiction, but to me it reads like a novel. In the best possible way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book group starts in ten days time – but the CAE was slow sending out the boxes –\u00a0 and I only picked this up on Thursday. I finished yesterday! This is an amazing feat, since all of last year I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4643"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4647,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4643\/revisions\/4647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}