Tag: Books for boys

I’d never given much thought to hoarding, but after reading Mary-anne Scott’s new book I’m seeing it everywhere. In the press. A memory of an uncle’s bedroom stacked with pillars of newspapers. I passed a couple of young boys on bikes, one of them saying: ‘I’m going to grandma’s. I hate it, the place is full of stuff.’ We get close to what being ‘full of stuff’ really means in The Mess of our Lives. This is no organised collection of things. It’s just a house so full of junk a woman keeps buying that the front door barely opens and there is no access to any of the rooms other than by tunnel to her armchair and TV. A nest for a bed. A barely functioning bathroom and a kitchen with rodents. But there is more in this book than a mother’s disorder. There is the effect it has on her kids.

Continue reading “The Mess of our Lives–book review”