- Paperback: 397 pages
- Publisher: Time Warner Paperbacks; New edition edition (10 Jun 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0751532681
- ISBN-13: 978-0751532685
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 303,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Anne Robinson's most recent public persona--the hardened battleaxe of television's The Weakest Link--is but a very small part of this quizmistress; Memoirs Of An Unfit Mother will most likely change your perceptions of the star. This book is a good read, but not a comfortable one. It's interesting: a saga-style across-the-generations tale of the Robinson clan. Of course, as a long-standing journalist before she hit the TV big time, Robinson's written style ensures the pages turn quickly. Memoirs of An Unfit Mother reads like a deposition for the defence of Anne Robinson, by Anne Robinson. It's hard to tell how many prospective readers know much of her life before the consumer TV programme Watchdog, so the author's decision to lay down hard facts about her alcoholism, the demise of a troubled marriage, blind ambition and the subsequent loss of custodial rights to her daughter Emma is risky.
Certainly, there have been hard lessons learnt. Which reader cannot sympathise with the empty dread a mother must feel when a child is taken away? The desperate loneliness? The horror of being judged as a failed parent? Sad things have certainly happened. But Robinson¹s reasoning--that the same would not happen to a hard-drinking workaholic man--only half helps her case for public support. It is difficult to empathise with someone who equates herself with Margaret Thatcher at every turn since the 1970s. Someone who recognises greed as a good point. And someone who seems to take great pride in telling how her husband was derided by colleagues when she became his boss. Readers who remember "Auntie Annie" from Watchdog may be shocked by her--perhaps self-protectively--hardened heart. Those who believe the hype for TV's Mrs Nasty are also mistaken--there aren't many intended wrongs here. Instead, Anne Robinson has laid herself bare, in an appeal to public opinion that she's been wronged by the system. Maybe she has. All in all, Memoirs of an Unfit Mother is worth reading, and worth learning from. It's all down here in black and white, but it is the grey areas in between which hold the intrigue. --Helen Lamont --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
The remarkable life story of the Fleet Street journalist and famous Watchdog and The Weakest Link TV personality that takes in Anne Robinson's doomed marriage; a vicious custody battle for her daughter; and her descent and fight back from alcoholism.
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First Sentence
Fifteen years after a mother has left the earth there is a grown-up daughter standing in a shop, saying petulantly to a saleswoman, 'I know it looks nice - but I don't wear purple.' Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Fifteen years after a mother has left the earth there is a grown-up daughter standing in a shop, saying petulantly to a saleswoman, 'I know it looks nice - but I don't wear purple.' Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Painfully honest,
By A Customer
This review is from: Memoirs of an Unfit Mother (Hardcover)
I have rarely read an autobiography which is as honest in its content as this. Notwithstanding the media hype, Anne Robinson's intellect and her sheer guts shine through. Her account of her alcoholism is so devoid of self-pity and so painfully accurate that it almost physically hurts to read it. I left the book feeling grateful and privileged to have had an insight into the personality of someone who in no way is, or ever was, an unfit mother. The book also gives a brilliant insight into the hypocrisy and sexism which pervaded British society in the 60s and70s. I highly recommend this book.
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
unfit mother or unfortunate mother,
By A Customer
This review is from: Memoirs of an Unfit Mother (Hardcover)
brilliant read from start to finish. Looking at her on the Weakest Link you wouldn't think she had been through so much. It does show though that you have to get up a get on with it, when you are knocked down again and again. I have nothing but admiration for her after reading this book.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Honesty and courage,
This review is from: Memoirs of an Unfit Mother (Paperback)
It takes a specially courageous person to admit to weaknesses; few have examined past weaknesses with the sort of honesty Anne Robinson shows in this book. Her battle against alcohol addiction gives an ungilded account of her powerlessness in the face of vodka and her final strength in rescuing herself from her self-made black hole. But also her fight against prevalent attitudes to women at the time she was taking her first steps in journalism shows how determination can overcome social prejudice. Her book does not reveal her as perfect; it reveals her as talented, strong but vulnerable, decisive yet indecisive, and above all honest. Anybody whose perception of Robinson is based on the dominatrix she plays in The Weakest Link may be in for a shock. Utterly compelling and utterly honest.
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