Once In A House On Fire: A Memoir [Paperback]

Andrea Ashworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1999

Internationally acclaimed as one of the most exciting debuts of the year, this stunning memoir has put Andrea Ashworth on the literary map as one of the brightest stars of her generation. Once in a House on Fire is the vivid and unforgettable portrait of a family terrorized by the explosive rage of one stepfather and then another. Yet Andrea never gives in to despair and finds a haven in the work of great writers-Joyce, Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and others-who allow her to see a world beyond her own and set her on her path toward intellectual and artistic awakening.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In her engrossing memoir, Once in a House on Fire, Andrea Ashworth recalls growing up poor in a violent English household during the 1970s and 1980s. Ashworth's father drowned when she was just 5. Her mother then married a man who beat her frequently and made life miserable for the whole family. When Ashworth's mother finally got rid of him, she married a small-time criminal who also soon became violent. Throughout her childhood, the author struggled to protect her little sisters from their stepfathers and kept the family going when their mother could not function because of her injuries, depressions, and blinding headaches. Ashworth and her family moved around quite a bit, often living in other people's houses, sleeping in cots or on floors. They all suffered from the emotional and economic instability of their situation. Ashworth recalls the sunglasses her mother wore through cloudy dark English winters to conceal her bruised eyes. She also remembers sneaking out of the house one day to run through a rich neighborhood, where she paused occasionally to open the mailboxes of the wealthy and smell their comfort and safety.

Although Ashworth's story is all about loneliness and love gone wrong, the surprising thing is that this book is not always terribly sad-- there are interludes when the children have fun and in those sunny moments it seems probable that all of them, especially Andrea, will survive more or less intact. Ashworth recalls the details of her childhood vividly, in brief scenes. In one of those scenes, two sisters race down a cobbled street at breakneck speed. Each of them has one roller skate on--they are sharing. Ashworth's writing is crisp, her dialogue right to the point. This book is reminiscent of Frank Conroy's Stop-Time and Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, both classic memoirs of adolescence. --Jill Marquis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

At 28, Ashworth writes eloquently and passionately about her British (and, for a time, Canadian) childhood with her widowed mother and sisters, who are brutalized by the mother's two husbands. The author triumphs over the abuse, poverty and racial slurs directed at her and her middle sister, Laurie, because of their part-Maltese background, by writing poetry, keeping a journal and reading authors from Shakespeare to Judy Blume and D.H. Lawrence. Despite the violent battles in small, often borrowed rooms, Ashworth holds onto her spirits and excels academically in literature, science and art. As her story ends, she heads off to Oxford. This coming-of-age memoir stands out for its integrity, lack of self-pity, colorful Manchester dialect and realistic dialogue. Perhaps most impressive, however, is the sisters' love for "our mother," who is so fearful of being alone that she returns again and again to abusive men. Ashworth's story rings true, though it's a bit difficult to believe that anyone's memory could call up, word for word, the scores of mundane conversations that this family exchanged in its daily life over a dozen years. With degrees from Oxford and Yale, Ashworth holds a fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford, and is working on a first novel. 25,000 first printing; major ad/promo.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (May 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805057633
• ISBN-13: 978-0805057638
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #414,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intense - Exceptional, June 26, 2001

By 

"moosifier" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Once In A House On Fire: A Memoir (Paperback)

Andrea Ashworth writes with a conciseness and beauty that I can only marvel at. Talking about the emotive and heartbreaking subjects in this autobiography, she manages to horrify with a simple sentence or describe the feelings of childhood with sublime ease.

The story is of growing up in Manchester in the late 70's and early 80's. Ashworth lost her father at a young age; the first of a series of events that lead to domestic violence spanning a decade. We feel pain at the desperation that Ashworth's mother must have felt, anguish at the treatment of the children's futures and a constant sense of anger as we veer from disgust at the "Dads" as well as hatred for the mother that allows her children to be maltreated in these ways.

The domestic violence campaign in the UK at the moment would receive a welcome boost if this book was more widely known. I constantly asked the question of why the mother stayed with such obviously useless, bullying and degenerate men, on more than one occassion having to put the book down to calm myself.

I found myself at times with little respect or feeling for the mother, as I could not understand how she could stand by whilst men, that were not the father of Andrea or her sister Lawrie, beat them, locked them away for days or ripped up prized possessions as a way of venting their cowardly anger on those truly defenceless.

I feel I am in a very good position to make this attack on the mother of Andrea Ashworth and her sisters. I was part of a young one-parent family when my mother was widowed with two children at the age of 26 and I live in the same city as this book is set. At no stage did she wallow in self-pity, allow anyone to lay a finger on me or my sister or watch any hope of either of us making something of ourselves go down the drain because someone else was jealous or ashamed of success not being their own. Because of this, we have broken the shackles of one-parent families and are, like Andrea, striking out on our own having got to University.

To this end, the book is perversely warming that despite being against literally all the odds, Andrea made it. We are not told if Lawrie and Sarah also escape the clutches, but we sincerely hope so; it would be such a crying shame if Lawrie did not fulfill her ambition to be a dancer.

In terms of the way this book is written, Ashworth shows an almost criminal ease in the way she describes everyday occurances. With just a well chosen verb or colour, the writing takes on a poetic slant at great odds with the horrors it describes. I found myself stopping to go back over certain words or phrases which were such a joy to read.

Unlike Ashworth, I struggle to come up with the correct words to describe this piece of work. The reader is taken through the whole range of emotions in this primarily dark and distressing book. No read has ever angered me as much as this or involved me as though I was actually a part of the story. The common effect is having your cheer for the ascent of good in the book to be muted by the rise, once again, of the bad. This book simply is brilliant

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Keeping events from emotions, July 1, 1999

By 

Edith de Vries - See all my reviews

This review is from: Once In A House On Fire: A Memoir (Paperback)

Very reminiscent of Angela's Ashes in style, intensity of suffocating circumstances and understatements. Beautiful and very precise descriptions of girlhood. I had to keep reading this book just to see if anything changed at all in the course of the story. Unfortunately nothing did - as often in reality. Whereas Andrea sticked literally to her mother for a long time, she suddenly goes off to Oxford, without any clue to this change in her. This book leaves me with many questions about the characters and their motives: What happened to her mother in the past? What moves Andrea? Is she a super-hero surviving this terrible house without any emotional or intellectual scratches? She seems to be able to make friends, study, draw, write, pass exams without having to study for it and be nice to her mother and sisters as well. I was waiting for her to have a good fight with her sisters or her mother. But they just huddle together and stick to each other. Probably one of the results of such a childhood is a memory that keeps emotions apart from events. This book did not enlighten darker sides of people and this does not seem so realistic as the story in itself is. Nevertheless I enjoyed getting involved!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, April 12, 2002

By 

"gemma235" (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Once In A House On Fire: A Memoir (Paperback)

What can I say about this book except it was incredible? I read it in 2 days on holiday, I just couldn't put it down... the only thing is, I wanted it to go on even after it had stopped... I just kept thinking - What happened next? As one critic of the book said, it is only a shame that she had to live it to write it.