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Women Like Us: A Memoir

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I don’t read much non-fiction, but am making it a rule to read at least one a month next year (please nudge if you don’t see one on my bio/reading update!). This was one I wish I’d read ages ago, what a book! Sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious and alwaysentirely relatable, Prowse details her early struggles with self-esteem and how she coped with the frustrating expectations others had of how she should live. Most poignantly, she delves into her toxic relationship with food, the hardest addiction she has ever known, and how she journeyed out the other side. Dramatise yourself as the narrator It’s not compulsory to be confessional, but as our guide you should let us get to know you a little. You’re a character too.

Spanning the majority of her life and covering every topic from family dynamics, teenage angst, growing up, changing times, relationships, moving home and moving forward into adulthood and beyond. Each topic beautifully presented to us with sensitivity and humour making it really easy to relate to - even when those subjects were difficult or unknown experiences. Amanda also shares the joys in her life. Actually having a baby against all the odds. Finding her soul mate despite being convinced she wouldn’t bother with another partner. The difficult journey to getting her first book published in her forties.Be surprising Work against the material. The reader will bring her own experience to it, so allow for that. Don’t be afraid to find humour round a death-bed, say, or tenderness amid misery and abuse. Sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious and always entirely relatable, Prowse details her early struggles with self-esteem and ho Trauma is often the trigger for a memoir: an abusive childhood, a life-threatening illness, the death of a parent or partner. It may be decades before the experience is written about, as with Lemn Sissay’s recent My Name Is Why, which recalls his years in the care system. According to Byron, it’s better that way – you need to wait till the pain has been processed: “While you are under the influence of passions, you only feel, but cannot describe them.” Then again, books composed in the immediate aftermath of a trauma aren’t necessarily worthless; it depends on the circumstances. And yet, the narrator argues, it was the voices of these women, whispering and murmuring in her head, which pushed the daughter to write in the first place. These 999 women urged her to speak through the tip of her pencil. These 999 women wanted the daughter to tell her mother that women like them do speak, even if it’s in a language that’s hard to understand. These 999 women form an army around the daughter and are always with her. They boil in her blood and their names roll off of her tongue. And their transcribed stories become the daughter’s testament “to the way that these women lived and died and lived again” (Danticat 225). Analysis

Amanda Prowse has built a bestselling career on the lives of fictional women. Now she turns the pen on her own life. Where do I start? What words can I use which will do this amazing, honest, inspiring autobiography? Be strict about point of view If you’re writing from the vantage point of a child, create a voice that sounds like a child (in tone and perception if not vocabulary). Alice Jolly’s Dead Babies and Seaside Towns is about motherhood, grief, infertility and the British coast. I have never read any books by this author before so I didn’t know anything about her before I started reading this memoir. I was going in blind, which for me, is always exciting! Plus, I love reading about other people's lives and experiences, their ups and downs, the lessons they have learned so far and how their lives have shaped them into the person that they are today.

The Novels

This memoir got really close to my heart as I was able to relate to the author's family when she was growing up, got so crazy about books and reading, how the experiences and the people we meet during our developmental stages leave an impact on us for the rest of our lives. With kids to look after, an ailing mother and a neglected husband, life is full for Emma Fountain— toofull, she realises, when she wakes up in IKEA after falling asleep in one of the show beds. Only her crazy, funny best friend Roz keeps her sane. But when Roz climbs in through her bathroom window one day to deliver terrible news, Emma’s belief that she can find a way around any obstacle crumbles in the face of a problem she just can’t fix.

This memoir was a rollercoaster to say the least, incredibly raw and real - the author really laid everything bare. It’s a story of real life, success, struggles and mainly hope for everything to come right in the end. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, but I think that’s what makes it a really special read. An undiagnosed medical condition, loss, abuse, miscarriages, and that overwhelming feeling of never being good enough or thin enough.

Latest News

From her childhood, where there was no blueprint for success, to building a career as a bestselling novelist against all odds, Amanda Prowse explores what it means to be a woman in a world where popularity, slimness, beauty and youth are currency?and how she overcame all of that to forge her own path to happiness.

Amanda opens up completely about all the ups and downs in her life, helping her readers who are facing similar struggles. From her agony and numerous operations as a child with a crumbling pelvis, surviving cancer, through her first failed marriage, many miscarriages, issues with her weight and food addiction, dealing with a child with mental health issues, to the menopause and facing an ageing face and body with positivity. Grab the reader’s attention from the off You can’t hit us with everything at once. You don’t even need to start with a major episode. But you do have to draw us in, establish a voice and hint at what lies ahead. She has always come across as a true, down to earth, 'real' woman, who has had her fair share of struggles, including being an army wife, battling cancer, and how her family coped with the depression her son Josiah went through due to them both writing about it.Best known for writing about fictional women, I wasn't too sure what to expect from Amanda Prowse's new book, her own memoir. Amanda takes a no holds barred journey through her life. In 'The Boy Behind' we learned about the problems her son had with depression, and imagined that since he was feeling better Amanda's life was now wonderful. After all, she is living the dream on a large farm near Bristol, and jets around the world promoting her multi million selling books. However, is a warts and all account (or a poo and all 😂) account. Amanda's story shows that even when you get what you have dreamt of all your life, you have nothing without good health - yours and your family's. Amanda's book isn't just for the rich, the glamorous, the successful, it's for women like us.

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