- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Headline; New edition edition (15 Jun 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747256608
- ISBN-13: 978-0747256601
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11.2 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 647,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Born to an impoverished young Tyneside woman in 1906, Catherine Cookson lived a life marked by cruelty and neglect. At the age of 27, she was able to buy a house of her own-a hopeful sign that the escape from her past was complete. In fact, her struggle had barely begun. Following the loss of four babies, a nervous breakdown, and confinement in a psychiatric hospital, she was brought to the brink of suicide and forced to confront the tragedies of her life. The author has known Catherine Cookson for many years and was given full cooperation on this biography by the novelist and her husband Tom, who provided many of the photographs for the book. Originally published in 1997, it tells the story of her long and eventful life through the heroines in her books.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When this biography of Catherine Cookson was published in hardcover, eight months before Catherine died, it became a No. 1 bestseller, with 107,000 hardback copies finding their way into readers' hands in just a few months. The reason it leapt away had less to do with my writing than Catherine's own determination to use it as a platform to say things she wanted to say before she died. While she was in bed in Newcastle feverishly writing her last novel, The Silent Lady, I was writing the biography in a remote farmhouse on the North York Moors about 100 miles to the south. When she finished the novel she began to ail seriously and called an end to my visits. But she kept in touch by phone, as she had done for the fifteen years we had known one another. There were, however, still some things that I needed her to consider more carefully than telephones allow and she suggested I jot a few questions on paper and she would dictate answers to them in due course. That was the way she wrote - with a dictating machine on the bed, the tapes then to be transcribed on paper. I heard nothing more in answer to my handful of questions for about four weeks, and knowing she was ill I didn't press her. Then suddenly one day the post man arrived at my door with a box. Inside were eleven tapes. Through the night, whenever she awoke, she had switched on her tape recorder and just talked. In the process she had answered my few questions and much, much more. These tapes, which I still treasure, represent her most personal testament. There were times when I couldn't tell whether it was Catherine speaking or one of her characters, and just how far this influenced the biography would be seen from a letter Catherine wrote to me after she had read my book: 'Your transposing of my character into the characters in the book is simply amazing,' she wrote, and went on to satisfy both her own dignity and every biographer's desire to reveal more than is proferred by his subject, by concluding: 'You know too much about me, Sir!'
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book on my way to London on a trip. I was shocked to see how carefully Catherine Cookson's life mirrored many of her characters. I found it extremely shocking in some ways too, with the way people treated illegitimacy in the early 20th centry. A fantastic read.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
The Girl from Leam Lane and other tales out of school
3 April 2000
Format:Paperback
I found this book very interesting and well written. Catherine Cookson's candidness gave this reader an insight into a background that allowed the author to create multi-faceted characters who persevere despite any obstacles that may arise.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
The Girl from Leam Lane and other tales out of school
3 April 2000
Format:Paperback
I found this book very interesting and well written. Catherine Cookson's candidness gave this reader an insight into a background that allowed the author to create multi-faceted characters who persevere despite any obstacles that may arise.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
In search of the real Catherine
16 Oct 2000
Format:Paperback
I bought this book believing that I would in some way know Catherine more intimately after reading most of her novels. I came away with an understanding of what her life was like and I greatly appreciated that aspect of the book. I was dissapointed in that a lot of it went back and forth between her life and the characters she wrote about. I felt as if I were traveling down a long bumpy road and then backing up at times. It could have been written much better in my opinion.
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