A Child called It

I've read this before, but my hubby is having to teach it and the young lady was happy to entertain herself (on my phone, bizarrely by locking herself in my bathroom in the dark, she calls it the dark room and it's currently her favourite place, that - or inside her wardrobe, that is also an icecream shop didn't you know) so I reached out for the nearest thing that I could find. I finished it in a day...

It was quite interesting to read purely because I was reading my husband's colleague's copy, and it had his annotations scribbled all over it. The book is the story of Dave, as a child and the traumatic start to life that he experienced through the neglect and torture that he experienced through his mother. I remember reading it as a teenager and just taking it at face value. It's hard to put down purely because you can't really believe that this could happen to a child and that no-one would pick up on it and report it for ages. However, reading it as an adult, and with the help of comments such as 'Oh dear Lord...', you realise how ridiculous some of the sentences are. It is meant to be written as if it was written by a child, however it is unrealistic that a child would use some words or think so philosophically about what was happening to him. Apparently this is being taught on a week where the students are looking at misery lit. I can't disagree with that description!

Swing Time

Hubby bought this for me as an un-Christmas present to thank me for doing a lot of child looking after solo in the run up to Christmas. I had actually started another book but put that aside to start this one. I really enjoyed reading it. I think it's my second Zadie Smith book?

It is the story of the narrator (I've only just realised that she is never named) and her friend Tracey. They grow up together on an estate in London, both are dancers but only Tracey has any natural talent. As they grow up, they grow apart. The narrator is the daughter of an ambitious black woman, who becomes an MP, and a white postal worker who lacks ambition. The narrator goes to university and lands herself a job with a record company and then as a PA to a singer, a job that takes her around the world. The novel has a general theme of dance that runs throughout it. But really this is the story of a young woman who has always been in someone else's shadow. Towards the end of the novel she starts to make her own decisions and starts to discover who she is away from the other's shadows.