Customer Reviews

Once In A House On Fire: A Memoir

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

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!

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.

3 September 2000. I have just finished this outstanding book. It is incredible how someone with so much suffering within their life can motivate themselves to better themselves. I wanted to shout at times to let the mother realise what was happening to her own children within a disfunctional household. Andrea holding the family together; her sisters looking to her for strength; the constant terrifying fear locked behind that front door; willing her mother to live and move away from her own suffering. Staggered that this is a book written about lives in the 1970's and 80's in UK. It should be a text book used for social workers and the police force. I hope that Ashworth is in the process of writing further books - I long to hear how things shape out for herself and her sisters. I am sure that the book and her achievments have been her therapy. It certainly puts into reality our own stresses and weaknesses. I shall certainly be passing this book to friends!(with a handkerchief!)

My sister handed this book to me and said that it was familiar to us and I should give it a read. I couldn't put it down. Not only did the story move me, but Ashworth has painted a vivid picture of the times as they were in England. I was born in 1971 and lived in England during the same period. I found that her depiction of the people, music and street life all struck an eerily precise chord in my memory bank. As a child who grew up in a violent household I found the residual emotions that this drama seemed to leave in Andrea and her sisters lives to be common with my experience and that of my sisters. A stunning work. I feel glad for Ashworth that she was able to get it down on paper in such an earthly manner.

My sister handed this book to me and said that it was familiar to us and I should give it a read. I couldn't put it down. Not only did the story move me, but Ashworth has painted a vivid picture of the times as they were in England. I was born in 1971 and lived in England during the same period. I found that her depiction of the people, music and street life all struck an eerily precise chord in my memory bank. As a child who grew up in a violent household I found the residual emotions that this drama seemed to leave in Andrea and her sisters lives to be common with my experience and that of my sisters. A stunning work. I feel glad for Ashworth that she was able to get it down on paper in such an earthly manner.

Andrea Ashworth has a stunning capacity in displaying long-lasting images. She writes her story in a way that is easy to relate to. Her use of words is capivating. These words, images, and her story pulled me in and kept me with her, making it hard to put the book down until I was done.

This is a truly moving and beautifully written memoir. It reads like a visceral and sensual dream/nightmare. Through her astonishing command of language and sense of poetry, she first creates a world of a child who hungers for safety, love, and physical nourishment, then a world of a teenager who learns to nourish herself with poetry. I preferred this to Angela's Ashes.

This delightful memoir reads like a novel. Its fresh imagery is reminiscent of Nabokov's Lolita. But it is the true story of how an abused child soared above her environment and escaped to Oxford University. It offers the reader a charming perspective of her past without self pity or rage. This book is an inspiration to all, especially to those traumatized by abuse and those who work with them. Translated into ten languages and ranking on the best seller lists in several countries, it is a must read. This reviewer, a psychiatrist, has found it instructive. Linn Turner, M.D.

I thoroughly recommend this book which charts the childhood of its author Andrea Ashworth. Although a memoir, the style is almost fictional, vivid, funny and moving. When Andrea is five, her father drowns. Two stepfathers reveal themselves to be capable of immense selfishness and great cruelty. However Once in a House on Fire is not simply the story of a poor and violent childhood. Brilliantly written, its warmth and humour conjure up the colours, tastes and smells of what it was like to grow up in the seventies in the north of England (with a brief stint in Canada). Andrea narrates from the perspective of the ages she writes about, spanning five to eighteen. Blessed with imagination and a love of books, stories were her escape, metaphorically and in the end, literally.