Customer Reviews

I Hope You Have A Good Life - True Story Of Love, Loss, And Redemption

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In a memoir every bit as compelling as his signature fast-paced literary thrillers (Jig, Jigsaw), Campbell Armstrong recounts a true and often heartrending tale of love and loss, guilt and redemption. In I Hope You Have a Good Life, Armstrong tells the story of his former wife Eileen, who after a valiant struggle with lung cancer died in February, 1998, and of Eileen's long-lost daughter Barbara, who--given up for adoption when Eileen was seventeen--relentlessy sought a mother she never knew across a gulf of four decades and seemingly insurmountable odds. Artfully intertwined with this is the story of a man on the lam from himself and his demons, and a family fragmented because of it. Almost as if we are in one of Armstrong's thrillers, we are swept from the sooty streets of Glasgow in the early sixties to mod London's cultural revolution later that decade; and from the winter blizzards of upstate New York in the seventies to the sledgehammer heat of a recent Phoenix summer. Through these times and locales Armstrong weaves the strands of a young woman's whispered confession in a candle-lit tent and, forty years later, her whispered deathbed request; of a writer's obsessive quest up from the dissolution of alcohol and drugs to find some sort of grace; and of another woman's search for her mother urged on by an impending sense that time is running out. As the strands converge, the writer achieves a sort of redemption through a promise finally kept, and the woman finds a mother's love at the last moment. In an age of literary "catharsis," the memoir has become a sort of industry too often based on the kind of neurasthenic twaddle spun from what granny did to one in the woodshed at the age of five. I Hope You Have a Good Life is a welcome departure from this. Campbell Armstrong stares at the sun without blinking, writing with skill and unstinting honesty of personal failings and the struggle to put things right, of promises exacted and at long last kept, and of a family reunited by death and by the transcendent power of enduring love.

I absolutely loved "I Hope You Have a Good Life." It was one of those special books that I couldn't wait to get to after I'd put my girls down at night. I'd reach the end of a chapter, look at the clock and know I should get to sleep, but then make the "mistake" of reading the first sentence of the next chapter and be hooked. And now I'm sad it's over.

Campbell Armstrong tells this amazing story with honesty, humility, and love. I was deeply touched by the short but richly fulfilling reunion between the two dying women--his ex-wife and her long-lost daughter.

Tears were pouring down my cheeks last night as I turned the last page. I got up to wash my face, and then I went in to my little girls' rooms to watch them in sleep for a minute and give them one more kiss. Then I got into bed and let my mind drift thru so many memories I have of my own mom. "I Hope You Have A Good Life" definitely reminds you to cherish it ALL.

What a story! I know Campbell Armstrong is a very good fiction writer but "I Hope You Have A Good Life" is something very special. I was so moved by this book that after I had read it I was deep in thought for a long time, and then I started to read it again! "I Hope You have A Good Life" is a heartbreaking story about separation and reunion of mother and daughter. Incredible description of family love and a life-and-death struggle. It is a great story about life altogether. I recommend this book to everyone.

A heart-touching story of love lost and love redeemed, a powerful life-affirming emotion-stirring account of two women, mother and daughter, parted for forty years through adoption, and reunited only when both are terminally sick. They share their lives in the short time left to them, and seek a common bond against the disease that is bringing an inevitable parting. Forty-two years of absence, and four short months of reconciliation - the author brings this vividly alive, not in a depressing way: this is a book that makes you proud to be human, a book to lift your spirits, not to dampen them. Armstrong, with a sharp eye for the ebb and flow of relationships, explores the byways of family connections, the nature of love, and the way we can face death with courage...This is arguably one of the finest memoirs written in many years and deserves wide readership. Put it at the very top of your list of books to read.

I was extremely touched by this book of Mr. Armstrong's. His writing style combined with the circumstances illicit many emotions. He brings out the reality of life, living, dying, death, and much more with so few words. Not only was I looking forward to the next page, I finished this book and started looking for other books by this author. I recommended this book to all of my family and friends believing that we all can learn from it.

I just read All That Really Matters the UK version of I Hope You Have A Good Life. What a wonderful book! I would definately give more than 5 stars if I could. The book is a true story of a woman who gave up her baby girl years ago. Well she gets married, to who else, Campbell Armstrong an aspiring writer, and has kids, 3 boys, of her own. After they move to Phoenix, they end up getting divorced and Campbell moves back to Ireland where they are originally from, while Eileen stays with the boys in Phoenix. Years later Eileen finds out she has cancer. Across the world, a woman named Barbara also finds out she has cancer. She has been looking for her real mother for a long time. When she finally finds her mother and they both discover they both have cancer, the illness doesn't matter anymore because they have found each other. This is a story of loves lost and found along with lifes ups and downs. What a magnificent story. I have also read Concert of Ghosts by Campbell Armstrong. Also a descriptive book!!!

** Campbell Armstrong's stock-in-trade is the international thriller. His villains are intriguinly evil. His protagonists exude a world-weary sadness, which is equally fascinating. Sometimes I feel like yanking one of them out of the novel and asking him how his life has come to this. (The reader knows it's been an interesting life. If only there weren't those bad guys to catch.) There's a lot of action in Armstrong's novels, but the most interesting arenas are inside the characters' heads. That's probably why Armstrong is considered a writer's writer. He breathes tropes. He has the keenest eye. And he understands sadness. He's always been good at what he does. Even so, I've often wondered what his huge talent might produce when set loose in another genre. Now I know. I Hope You Have A Good Life is part memoir, part biography. It tells the story of Eileen and Barbara, a mother and daughter separated, by a forced adoption, for 42 years. It is a story the two women wanted to tell, themselves. But fate was not obliging. When Barbara found her mother, after decades of relentless searching, Eileen was dying of cancer. And so was Barbara. But Eileen found a way. She asked her friend and ex-husband, the father of her three sons, to write the improbable but heart- breakingly true story of her reunion with Barbara. I Hope You Have A Good Life is that book. To tell their story was to tell his story too, and Armstrong has done this. In his capable hands we discover how the stuff of real life is often stranger than fiction. The truest heros are sometimes the people we love and live with, or sadly, learn we can't. The real lives of Campbell and Eileen and Barbara and their children turn out to be every bit as compelling as any fictional characters. If there's a heart in your chest, you won't get through this book without a few good cries. You'll not be untouched and you'll be the better for it. Campbell Armstrong not only has the skill to keep Eileen and Barbara forever alive in the pages of this beautiful book, but the honesty to tell his own, often unflattering story. I don't know another book quite like this one. It deserves a wide circle of friends. I hope you'll become one.

The main story alone that this book tells would be enough to keep a reader fascinated---an adopted daughter finding her birth mother, and finding out both are fighting cancer. This book tells lots of other stories too, and they are good ones---the crumbling of a marriage, a father reconnecting with his grown sons, a family moving to America, and more. The writing is clear and at times heartbreaking. Certainly worth a read.

I was extremely touched by this book by Mr. Armstrong. His writing style combined with the circumstances elicited many emotions and thoughts. He brings out some of the realities of life, living, dying, death, and so much more with so few words. Not only was I looking forward to the next page, I finished the book and started looking for other books by this author. I have recommended this for reading to all of my family members and friends believing that we all can learn from it.

The long awaited story has finally been told by Campbell Armstrong. The beauty unfolds with every page. He tells the truth and nothing less and with such selflessness and consideration. Something very magical appears throughout this book, a magic that shines through a tragedy. In reading this I felt the love and strength that it takes to bond a family together forever, the courage that comes from the soul of a good man and a life we all can relate to. Crying was easy, putting the book down was the hardest part.

Hats off to Armstrong!!