Not really a book review

This is not really a book review – I haven’t yet finished the book in any case. It is more about age related problems. As you know, these last few weeks have been busy, and I have been a bit sorry for myself at having to recover so slowly.

Enough moaning about that….. One of the recommendations that I had on my book list was The C-Word, by Lisa Lynch. I added it onto an amazon order a couple of months ago and it has been sitting on my to-read shelf until this week.

I don’t know about you, but I often find books by people who are in recovery from trauma, illness, death of friends or partners etc strangely uplifting; they have the ability to lift me out of my own troubled zone and into a whole new realm. This book, so I thought, would be the same. Not so….. at least not at first. Here, displayed for all to see was a language I barely understood, attitudes I failed to comprehend and far too much swearing and total irreverence for the basic principles of wholesome living. If I had borrowed the book rather than purchased it, I would have given up reading after the first few chapters. However, I persisted, and am gradually learning about cancer, yes, but far more than that, I am learning about the young and those starting out on adult life.

It shames me to admit it, after all, I have four adult sons and younger friends, but here I am being confronted with a whole new way of dealing with trauma. Gradually, I am seeing the humour which Stephen Fry speaks of in his commendation. More importantly I am learning to love the writer and to admire her take on life. It has all highlighted for me the way that the young and the old can often speak in colloquialisms that inhibit their understanding of one another. A glimpse at my facebook page reinforces this.

Her ongoing story is on her blog page – if you do go to look at it and the language puts you off, it might help to read the book first. I shall certainly be watching her progress with interest and concern over the months, and I am going to try that little bit harder to understand the language and concerns of the young. It would be interesting to know what both young and older think of this disparity.