Birmingham Girls [Kindle Edition]

I had my eye on this book from the first time I saw it. I have to be honest, part of the attraction was because it's set in the general area where I was born and grew up, but having read it I would have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone.

Birmingham Girls is part memoir, part social history, part local history and part family history. It begins with the author deciding to research her family history. As she traces her ancestors and finds out about them, this in turn jogs memories of her childhood, the places she lived and the people she knew.

The book is written mostly in chronological order but sometimes drifts into other times and places. It is arranged in short sections, some predominantly about people and others about events or places. It is like looking through a box of old photographs, some are complete in themselves while others trigger associated memories. It's a book that's easy to dip into and read a couple of pages at a time, yet equally it becomes more compelling as the reader is drawn into Carol's life.

As an author myself, I find myself looking critically and wondering how this book would be handled if it were published by the mainstream press rather than as an independent. And while it would be tempting to neaten up a sentence here and there or arrange things in a different order, I have to say that I'm very glad that the commercial publishers haven't got their hands on it. Because, as it is, it is full of integrity, of little nuances and asides. It drifts like the mind does. It is the author speaking, telling her story in her own words. To interfere with that would be like the old-fashioned idea of insisting all actors and TV presenters speak in the same way.

If I had the job of editing this book I would probably suggest changing the last few pages. Here, a few random sections are added as afterthoughts and I would probably try to slot them into the main text. Yet, having said that, I love the way the book ends with an ephemeral carefree memory and I would rather it stay exactly as it is with a few aspects which might be perceived by some as faults rather than risk losing this honest and innocent portrayal of peoples' lives.

As a Birmingham girl myself, I had high hopes of this book - what a disappointment. It is poorly written (and very badly edited). It jumps about, is written in a muddled and incoherent way and ends almost in thin air - as if the PC broke down and she couldn't be bothered to finish the final chapter! I would classify it as a musing of memories, designed to entertain only her family, not for commercial or general public interest at all. It reminds me of my own Grandmother's diaries - they were great fun to read by those of us who knew her and the family she wrote about, but of no interest or substance to anyone else. A really poor effort, the standard of writing not much better than that of an enthusiastic sixth former...I won't be buying the "follow up" and had it not been so cheap on Kindle, I'd have been very miffed at wasting money on it.

I bought the Kindle edition of this book knowing full well that biographies and autobiographies aren't my thing when it comes to books, but because I had heard so much about it I decided to give it a go. It tells of the struggle of a fatherless family to make ends meet in Birmingham - a city I don't know at all - Carol Arnall's early life, her progression into adulthood, a series of different jobs, the problems of friendships, and meeting her husband and their life together. It also includes some nice family photographs.

Although it does have a habit of chopping and changing scenes, I was drawn in, and I decided it didn't matter. This isn't a novel - although it would make a good plot for a novel - it is a memoir, a collection of memories. Memories are a mish-mash of pictures of our past lives, things we're aware of at the time, but later when you try to piece them together it's hard to make full sense of them. Try as we might, sometimes the best we can do is to remember bits of things. The author has done well to collect her memories, some painful ones at that, and sort them into chronological order, giving the reader an image of her life. Yes, very often the author goes off on a tangent, telling us about one event, then saying something like, 'that reminds me of the time...' This is something we often do in normal conversation, and it is like the author is having a chat with the reader over a cup of coffee. It makes the memories come to life in that sense.