Red Dust Road (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

I'd never heard of Jackie Kay before and didn't know anything about this book apart from the little that is said on the book jacket. I thought that the book starting with the meeting with her birth father was a bit clunky and I would have preferred that the book had started with the account of her childhood with her (wonderful) adoptive parents and brother but I guess that this way quickly established the deep wound at the centre of her life. With the account of her childhood I quickly got into the book and I began to cry and I didn't really stop throughout the whole book! I found it all very, very emotional - like a supercharged episode of the BBC series "Who do you think you are" - although I have never personally experienced anything like this myself. However, I did empathise with the accounts of Jackie's meetings with her birth mother who, like my own mother, was developing dementia (more crying).

I thought the book was beautifully written, I enjoyed the jumps in time and space - from Glasgow to Nigeria, from Aberdeen to Milton Keynes - which seemed to flow naturally and replicate the haphazard nature of memory. And I got a real sense of all these places, particularly Nigeria (the red dust road of the title). I thought that this was an amazingly powerful book, full of warmth and very funny but I'm really glad to have finished it so I can finally stop bloody crying!

RED DUST ROAD, both laugh-out-loud and deeply moving, is a delight - I read it in one sitting. The opening pages are brilliant. It is a book that reminds you that family is always made, not merely manufactured biologically, and - very rarely - a work of literature about adoption that is never bleak, but instead uplifting, wonderfully nuanced, and deeply rewarding to read. I loved it.

I just don't understand how anyone could give this book fewer than the full five stars! For me, this was one of the best books I've ever read - thought-provoking, hilarious, sad and beautiful in turn. I have already lent it to my best friend, bought a copy for my husband, and recommended it to other friends.

It's an engaging and deeply moving read - and it starts brilliantly by describing Jackie's first meeting with her biological father, a born-again Christian and preacher in Nigeria. At various points while reading this I laughed out loud (including while on the underground with people looking at me and thinking I must be mad - but it really was side-splittingly funny) and was also moved to tears.

This is non-fiction at its rawest - Jackie Kay's autobiographical writing is both unflinchingly genuine and beautifully written. She is a very appealing, likeable narrator, which makes it even harder to read of her experiences of rejection and prejudice - although these experiences aren't recounted with self-pity at all. Kay's memories are woven together thematically, so the book does jump around a bit chronologically, but it's very compelling in terms of how it builds up these themes in rich layers waiting to be dug into when Kay meets her birth parents.

This is not just a book about adoption (though obviously that forms its starting point) but about the whole experience of growing up, and about the nuances of growing up as a girl, as a lesbian and as somebody of mixed race. So I know it is not just about one thing, and that may make it less appealing to some readers. But personally I felt this really worked for me. Because how can you understand adoption, and think about what makes real family, without thinking about the whole experience of growing up and discovering yourself and understanding what family means? It did not matter to me that I had not been adopted, am not lesbian and am not mixed race - that is not the point and that is not why you should pick up this book. Red Dust Road is not a book that shuts out readers. Rather, it is a book that welcomes them in, with great generosity of spirit, inviting them to listen to the story and think and empathise and understand. And throughout the whole book, Jackie Kay's extraordinarily genuine and appealing voice shines through.

A stunning book.