Antigona and Me
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Review
"One woman's salvation can be another's damnation . . . and Clanchy brilliant teases out the role she plays in compounding Antigona's powerlessness.Clanchy worries that in writing Antigona's story she may be conscripting her into another kind of servitude. The opposite is true. This is a compelling portrait of an extraordinary woman, written with a poet's precision." --Observer
"One morning, a privileged North London writer, Kate Clanchy, chances upon a Kosovan refugee called Antigona. The former offers the latter a job as a cleaner on impulse. So begins a moving friendship that results in this journal of Antigona's escape from her wartorn homeland, domestic torture and alien status in Britain. '' --Independent
"Antigona and Me is the story of this fascinating relationship. It is a retelling of a personal, and incredibly moving, history. It looks at the clash of cultures which, like it or not, is present in every major town and city in this country. It can be gossipy. It can be shocking.
It also throws up all sorts of intriguing issues and dilemmas.
It is not a book that I expected to like but I liked it very much indeed."
--Scott Pack , Me And My Big Mouth
`What was surprising and a bit unexpected was the way in which things that are often demonised in the press were shown as fundamental to her recovery. Rarely have I come across a depiction of someone living in a one-bed council flat on incapacity benefit shown in such a positive, life-affirming light...'
--Socialist Review
'. Clanchy grapples with guilt in employing a woman to do her housework, re-evaluates her approach to motherhood and is shocked by the Malesis insistence on shame and revenge. It is Antigonas determination to escape those ancient values that threaten to rip apart her family and push her to the brink of self-destruction. Clanchy tells this heart-rending story with lucid intellectual rigour and instinctive compassion.' --Daily Mail
`Clanchy's account says something important about female refugees, who are often in flight from aspects of their former lives as much as from persecution. The book ends with shocking finality when Antigona is suddenly deported. Clanchy's distress is still palpable and her book is a tribute to their friendship.'
--Sunday Times
"One morning, a privileged North London writer, Kate Clanchy, chances upon a Kosovan refugee called Antigona. The former offers the latter a job as a cleaner on impulse. So begins a moving friendship that results in this journal of Antigona's escape from her wartorn homeland, domestic torture and alien status in Britain. '' --Independent
"Antigona and Me is the story of this fascinating relationship. It is a retelling of a personal, and incredibly moving, history. It looks at the clash of cultures which, like it or not, is present in every major town and city in this country. It can be gossipy. It can be shocking.
It also throws up all sorts of intriguing issues and dilemmas.
It is not a book that I expected to like but I liked it very much indeed."
--Scott Pack , Me And My Big Mouth
`What was surprising and a bit unexpected was the way in which things that are often demonised in the press were shown as fundamental to her recovery. Rarely have I come across a depiction of someone living in a one-bed council flat on incapacity benefit shown in such a positive, life-affirming light...'
--Socialist Review
'. Clanchy grapples with guilt in employing a woman to do her housework, re-evaluates her approach to motherhood and is shocked by the Malesis insistence on shame and revenge. It is Antigonas determination to escape those ancient values that threaten to rip apart her family and push her to the brink of self-destruction. Clanchy tells this heart-rending story with lucid intellectual rigour and instinctive compassion.' --Daily Mail
`Clanchy's account says something important about female refugees, who are often in flight from aspects of their former lives as much as from persecution. The book ends with shocking finality when Antigona is suddenly deported. Clanchy's distress is still palpable and her book is a tribute to their friendship.'
--Sunday Times
The Bookseller
'Fascinating and full of admirable things, including Antigona's resilience and industry, and Clanchy's desire to give her friend a voice.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
When I started reading this book I didn't think I was going to like it at all. I imagined a sort of preachy, politically correct, middle-class liberal Londoner shoving it in my face. Well, it was in my face but it was so not preachy or pc or even middle-class. What I read was life lived right on the edge in all its grittiness and truth. Kate Clanchy does what really good writers are supposed to do; she gave me a clear and unobstructed window into a lived life. I wasn't just an observer. I was there in her own awakening. Tragedy and struggle in the life of a displaced person, fleeing the ravages of war, caught in the grip of blind government policies weaves its way through these pages, yes. But so much more of the brilliancy of life lived honestly, painfully, beautifully in Antigona as she navigates her way through the maze of what we so casually call Britain.
Antigona works hard, very hard, to pay back the criminal outfit that got her into the UK. She works hard to send money back to her family. She struggles against the moral code from her old country and culture but never truly abandons it. Still, she works - twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour days, seven days a week. Perhaps not what you think of when you imagine asylum seekers hidden in all the dark corners of the UK and other European countries.
Everything you thought you knew about asylum seekers or displaced persons or those 'foreigners' washed up upon our shores is challenged gracefully by Kate Clanchy in this honest tale for our times. It is a beautifully written chronicle of one British woman's encounter with the unknown, the different, the 'other'. She may start out as a 'do-gooder' but she becomes real, honest, and so very open in her encounter with all she once took for granted. And her writing carries you along so smoothly you hardly realize you are on the journey until you come to the end.
I liked this book very much. I think it is very well written and important in its topic of discussion. I'd like to hear it read on Radio 4. I'd love to hear Kate and Antigona on Woman's Hour and The Book Club on the World Service. Once you read it you'll know what I mean. Enjoy!
Antigona works hard, very hard, to pay back the criminal outfit that got her into the UK. She works hard to send money back to her family. She struggles against the moral code from her old country and culture but never truly abandons it. Still, she works - twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour days, seven days a week. Perhaps not what you think of when you imagine asylum seekers hidden in all the dark corners of the UK and other European countries.
Everything you thought you knew about asylum seekers or displaced persons or those 'foreigners' washed up upon our shores is challenged gracefully by Kate Clanchy in this honest tale for our times. It is a beautifully written chronicle of one British woman's encounter with the unknown, the different, the 'other'. She may start out as a 'do-gooder' but she becomes real, honest, and so very open in her encounter with all she once took for granted. And her writing carries you along so smoothly you hardly realize you are on the journey until you come to the end.
I liked this book very much. I think it is very well written and important in its topic of discussion. I'd like to hear it read on Radio 4. I'd love to hear Kate and Antigona on Woman's Hour and The Book Club on the World Service. Once you read it you'll know what I mean. Enjoy!
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
After recently reading a fictional story about an asylum seeker in the UK, I was drawn to this book for a story about a real refugee. While this book addresses the journey of this refugee immigrant, Antigona, it is much more than that. We learn about Antigona and her experiences through the author telling the story of the development of their relationship as friends over a number of years. The cultural differences are wide but their friendship grows closer as they learn about each other.
This books gives real insight into a different culture (largely Albanian, but the author describes quite clearly why a label such as this is never accurate) and the rules which some women are forced to live by. The author also reflects on her own perceptions and prejudices in a very honest way. Despite some harrowing content the book has an upbeat feel to it and is often funny.
It's a book for women that will make you think about the way you were brought up, expectations, lifestyle (especially how housework fits in) and the pressures of life. While nominally this is a book about a refugee it is really a book about women and friendship. Some non-fiction work can be dry, but this book is very accessible and easily readable.
This books gives real insight into a different culture (largely Albanian, but the author describes quite clearly why a label such as this is never accurate) and the rules which some women are forced to live by. The author also reflects on her own perceptions and prejudices in a very honest way. Despite some harrowing content the book has an upbeat feel to it and is often funny.
It's a book for women that will make you think about the way you were brought up, expectations, lifestyle (especially how housework fits in) and the pressures of life. While nominally this is a book about a refugee it is really a book about women and friendship. Some non-fiction work can be dry, but this book is very accessible and easily readable.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Kate Clanchy's memoir of her friendship with Antigona examines what happens when the expectations and experiences of a North London poet collide with those of a Kossovan Albanian woman who is newly arrived in the UK. Antigona is everything the Daily Mail hates: an asylum-seeker (and, moreover, one who may not have been truthful in her asylum claim), a cash-in-hand worker who evades taxes and uses a false identity, a single mother. Kate is struck immediately by the force of Antigona's character, and her obvious personal strength. Seeing that Antigona is in financial need, she offers her a job, initially as her cleaner and later as her nanny. A deep friendship develops between the two women, yet the cultural divide can never truly be bridged. As Kate learns about the truly horrendous-sounding "Kanun of Lek" (the ancient mountain code of blood feuds and honour killings in which Antigona has been raised), her admiration grows as she contemplates Antigona's escape from a system where women are literally their husband's possessions, and in which domestic violence and rape at the hands of one's husband is accepted as normal. Yet as Antigona's daughters approach adulthood it is clear that the Kanun is still within her, dictating her feelings about what is acceptable behaviour for young women. Meanwhile, Kate contemplates a number of uncomfortable questions: what makes it right for her, as a relatively wealthy woman with a professional husband, to be able to purchase hours of another woman's life so that she can have "me time"? And if this also facilitates "quality time" with Kate's children, what of Antigona's own children and the time taken away from them? Clanchy explodes Germaine Greer's 1970 arguement that "brilliant women" must be freed up from childcare, by asking: what of the women who perform this service? What if they too have the capability to be "brilliant", but have lacked the opportunities to develop their talents (Antigona learns languages effortlessly, but is barely literate, school being considered an unnecessary luxury for girls who are destined for marriage and farming)? As a woman who has handed my children over to under-educated nursery workers, and stay-at-home mothers raising extra cash through childminding, so that I can go off to the office where I do my interesting job, I too squirm in contemplating these issues. This book manages to engage with tough questions of this nature whilst also being a touching and compelling description of Clanchy's empathy with Antigona, and the impact of violence and control on Antigona's life.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
An illuminating read
A memoir of the relationship between the poet-author (friendship, sisterhood, employer, mentor?) and Antigona, an Albanian Kosovan migrant, whose life was torn apart by the war... Read more
Published 3 days ago by Hils T
Good in parts
I didn't really begin to enjoy this book until about half-way through. Generally I found it repetitive and chronologically challenging. Read more
Published 14 months ago by P. Trendall
How the other half lives
Why has noone told me about this book before? Despite 32 reviews here on Amazon I would say that this novel has been remarkably under-discussed. Read more
Published 17 months ago by christine a
The amazing story of a refugee from Kosovo
Originally published as "What is She doing Here?" in hardback.
Tells of the tribulations and great successes of Antigona, a woman who arrives in England with three... Read more
Tells of the tribulations and great successes of Antigona, a woman who arrives in England with three... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Jacqui S
A bit of a struggle, but with saving graces
Reviews can be difficult to write. Some books aren't just 'good' or 'bad' and it's challenging to decide just what you make of them, let alone trying to express that for others. Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2010 by R. Lawson
The best book I read in 2009 - thought-provoking and compellingly...
This isn't the type of book I would normally read or pick up. However, clearly I have been missing out! What an exceptionally well-written and thought-provoking book this is! Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2010 by Gabrielle O
Interesting but took a long time to read
I didn't find this book as compelling to read as I expected to, part of the reason for that maybe because it made me feel uncomfortable. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2009 by Janie U
Gut-wrenching honesty, full of laughter and tears
This isn't the kind of book I would usually read, having expected it to be a self-obsessed autobiography... How wrong could I be? Read more
Published on 17 Dec 2009 by Sunshine
Much better than first impressions would suggest
Antigona and Me is a true story about a North London feminist befriending, employing and describing the life of a Kosovar Albanian refugee who came to the UK illegally. Read more
Published on 14 Dec 2009 by Max
Shocking, illuminating, enjoyable read. Book Club essential!
I was very keen to read Kate Clanchy's true account of her developing friendship with her Kosovan cleaner-cum-nanny Antigona, who fled the Albanian war with her three children. Read more
Published on 7 Dec 2009 by C. A. Austin
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