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Wah! Things I Never Told My Mother

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About this listen

Cynthia's mother is dying. Often. Travelling between her home in Scotland and California, as she spends time at her mother's bedside. Cynthia recalls her youthful adventures: living in a squat, train-hopping, hitchhiking and all the other things she never told her mother.

©2022 Cynthia Rogerson (P)2022 W F Howes Women
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I had never come across Cynthia Rogerson before, but am very glad I happened across this excellent memoir. The writing is very accomplished and the author's life has plenty of incident. It's reflective in tone, but fast paced. Structured as a series -- or constellation -- of self-standing short narratives, it would be ideal for bedtime reading or for a commuter. It deals with big themes -- death, childhood, parenthood, guilt -- with humour and without heaviness.

A big shout out to the reader, Helen Keeley. I assumed when listening -- if I assumed anything -- that I was hearing the West-coast American voice of the author, and was surprised by her talent for English accents from home-counties posh to cockneyfied to generic northerner. Only then did I realise that the narrator is a Brit who is a genius with accents and an excellent reader besides.

The publishers have made a complete pig's ear of the chapter titles. The chapter entitled 'Wah!' -- the actual name of the book FFS -- has been labelled 'Waaahh'. 'A Year is a Circle' becomes 'The Year is a Circa'; 'Priscilla the Pig' becomes 'Pressilup the Pig'; 'Hospice Doghouse' becomes 'Auspis Doc House'. It's bizarre that audiobook publishers treat their books with such apparent contempt. And a shame that the product of excellent writing and expert reading should be marred by such carelessness.

Brilliant

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