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  • Skint Estate

  • A Memoir of Poverty, Motherhood and Survival
  • By: Cash Carraway
  • Narrated by: Cash Carraway
  • Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (353 ratings)
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Skint Estate cover art

Skint Estate

By: Cash Carraway
Narrated by: Cash Carraway
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

"Everyone has their price. It's just not always monetary. Mine is though. 20 quid."

Single mum. 'Stain on society'. Caught in a poverty trap.

It's a luxury to afford morals and if you're Cash Carraway, you do what you can to survive.

From the creator of HBO and BBC's Rain Dogs, Skint Estate is the hard-hitting, blunt, dignified and brutally revealing debut memoir about impoverishment, loneliness and violence in austerity Britain - set against a grim landscape of sink estates, police cells, refuges and peepshows - skilfully woven into a manifesto for change.

Alone, pregnant and living in a women's refuge, Cash Carraway couldn't vote in the 2010 general election that ushered austerity into Britain. Her voice had been silenced. Years later, she watched Grenfell burn from a women's refuge around the corner. What had changed? The vulnerable were still at the bottom of the heap, unheard. Without a stable home, without a steady income, without family support - how do you survive?

In Skint Estate, Cash has found her voice - loud, raw and cutting. This is a book born straight from life lived in Britain below the poverty line - a brutal landscape savaged by universal credit, zero-hours contracts, rising rents and public service funding cuts. Told with a dark lick of humour and two-fingers up to the establishment, Cash takes us on her isolated journey from council house childhood to single motherhood, working multiple jobs yet relying on food banks and temporary accommodation, all while skewering stereotypes of what it means to be working class.

Despite being beaten down from all angles, Cash clings to the important things - love for her daughter, community and friendships - and has woven together a highly charged, hilarious and guttural cry for change.

©2019 Cash Carraway (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Cash is the definition of edgy, a truly distinctive voice." (Lionel Shriver, best-selling author of We Need to Talk about Kevin)

What listeners say about Skint Estate

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Terrible narration, biased view

As a single parent living on a estate I decided to purchase this book hoping it would give us all a voice. Instead all I found was a bitter author using the book to give her own opinion, she complains about being judged whilst judging other people.

Narration was awful, speeding up and slowing down in places. Some words drawn out such as say the as thhhhhhe. Didn’t get past 10 minutes before stopping

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10 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Cash is astonishing.

Brave doesn't come close. I don't review normally but this is important and beautifully read



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7 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Very good writing but...

Very good, interesting and original writing. But for whatever reason I struggled to properly connect and empathize with her. Maybe because of the fatc that her boook was a stream of intellectual and sarcastic comments (telling the author story almost in between the lines) rather than chronological and emotional memoir.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Moving and thoughtful

I loved this book and despite it being a hard listen at times due to the harsh reality of the story, I am glad I have listened to it and was very moved by it. Everyone should read this book and it’s truths which are a real eye opener and a disgrace that people still have to live and fight so hard just to get by even when they are working and trying to create a better life.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Thank the lord for this lady

This is wonderful! I’m sure many labour supporting single mothers (like myself) who live in and around our capital can relate to this! It is also really funny, and far too late coming! Thank god, this lady by giving this (very, very) frank account has given a generation a voice, I don’t want London to be socially cleansed and only accessible to a load of boring, privileged torries! Go Cash! I hope those in charge are reading this. (They should be ashamed of themselves).

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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blown away

Listen very hard to this absolutely devastatingly powerful memoir. Beautifully written and narrated by Cash. I hope Steve and Lorraine get a copy for their library. xxx

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Sickening and heartening in equal measure

What a writer! Her turn of phrase made me laugh and cry as her story broke my heart, made me incredibly angry about our shitty government and austerity in general and filled me with hope all at once. Knew I had to listen to it to get the full experience after following her on social media and hearing her unique intonation and the wonderful Penge accent

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Hilarious, gritty, sad and brilliant all in one

Wasn’t too sure at first but by the end I loved it. Anyone who has never known domestic abuse or poverty should listen to / read this. I would recommend listening as Kash makes it more real.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Uncomfortably uncompromisingly real

I brought my children up as a single parent, in the ‘90s - has to rely on benefits, shocking to hear that what was a struggle back then has become even more challenging today. Respect and admiration to Cash and every woman filling both the roles of both parents

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Skint Estate

Harrowing! Should be read by all tories!
Good luck with the rest of your life, Cash!

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1 person found this helpful