- Paperback: 391 pages
- Publisher: Pan; New edition edition (8 Jun 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330368656
- ISBN-13: 978-0330368650
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 630,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Anyone curious about other people will enjoy Secrets and Lives, created by award-winning writer Mary Loudon. Concerned to "distil without deceiving" over 2 million words from interviews with residents of the Oxfordshire market town of Wantage, she presents what she calls "a series of photographs", in words, of lives and opinions. Mary Loudon grew up in Wantage and clearly has the trust of her subjects, who speak openly of their views on important issues and who share the ups and downs of their lives. From the estate agent to the vicar, from the gay nurse to the saxophone-playing film extra, this apparently ordinary community has some extraordinary stories to tell. There is much to empathise with, much to debate with and a surprising amount to learn. Aiming to correct the "myth of harvest-festival cosiness", the book also directly expresses views on life in a rural market town. What is a "great feeling of community" to some is "claustrophobic" to others. Although Loudon states that it is "not social history and it's not analysis", Secrets and Lives certainly contributes to the topical debate on British rural life and will surely become an excellent resource for future social historians. Bringing the allure of television docu-soap to literature, Secrets and Lives is informative and entertaining. --Karen Tiley
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
A collection of 46 utterly compelling true stories from Wantage, a typical English market town, each in the subjects' own words, which together build a portrait of provincial England as has never been painted before.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I approached this book with some sceptism and wondered what sort of picture it would paint of the town that I also grew up in. However, I was astonished and delighted to find that it was a brilliant reflection of the lives of the people in Wantage. I know many of the story tellers in the book and at times it was like reading someone elses diary, such was the insight into their thoughts and feelings. Funnily enough, it never occurred to me that Wantage was 'middle England', but that depends on how you define this stereotype; this book goes a long way to exploding that myth. I can't help but wonder if the town will be inundated with tourists this summer?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Extremely well written, and pieced together so that social extremes are linked through every day life. Real people, with real attitudes. A sociological, historical and economic review of a typical/ (untypical?) rural market town seen through the eyes of a broad cross section of the community. Each chapter is a moving mini autobiography, leaving one able to draw many comparisons in one's own life, irrespective of social class or community.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
[From the Macmillan spring catalogue, 2000]
Secrets And Lives, Middle England Revealed. "A Moving and eloquent record of the heroism of everyday life. We haven't seen its like since Mayhew." Fay Weldon
Secrets And Lives, Middle England Revealed, is a collection of 48 compelling true stories, each in the subjects' own words, taken from three years of conversations with nearly 100 people from a typical English market town where the author herself grew up.
The result is a portrait of the English as has never been painted before. To some, Middle England is green-welly land, a culture of crickets and pearls and Range Rovers, where people go to church and vote Tory. Yet the people who reveal themselves so fully to Mary Loudon show that this is anything but true. The Middle England she so subtly exposes is an England of extremes and opposites: Middle England is, in fact, most of us. It emerges as a place, and a disposition, as bleak for some as it is privileged for others; as loathed as much as it is loved; as nostalgic as progressive. Potent, moving and unexpectedly shocking, Secrets And Lives will shatter the myth of small-town, harvest festival cosiness and rural bliss while reinforcing a universal human desire for love, security and community identity.
Through telling tales of their lives, her subjects speak of a whole century's worth of emotion and experience, with unparalled candour. Morris dancing, hunting, selling shoes, taking drugs, standing for Mayor, getting divorced, contemplating suicide, forgiving the Japanese, turning your son in to the police, being the only Muslim in town. Being ordinary, being extraordinary, being invisible. Secrets And Lives is a totally unique, intimate and highly sensitive portrayal of other people's lives, and the ways in which they may speak of our own.
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