Rebecca's Secrets
Paperback, 254 pages
| Price: | $20.74 |
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What happens when a boy starts asking questions?
It’s New Year’s day, 1956, and as the low winter sun penetrates the dark corners of Eric Street, it sets fire to a boy’s curiosity.
“Until this day I’d lived unaware. I didn’t live my life — it lived me. But I did know I was different from other kids. There was something secret about me and my family. That morning I became curious. That day I started asking questions.”
Charming, funny and sad, this novel is based on a true story. Tommy Angel is an orphan growing up with his grandparents, Rebecca and Daniel, in the East End of London in the Fifties. Tommy tries to make sense of the world around him but his questions arouse shameful memories, stir the family ghosts and open a box of dark family secrets. Gradually he uncovers the truth about his lost sisters, his real father and mother.
The author, a distinguished educator, born in 1945, grew up in an extended Jewish family in the East End of London. This debut novel is based on his childhood.
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Lulu Sales Rank: 11902
3 People Reviewed This Item
"Rebecca's Secrets"
I couldn't help loving this wonderful book. It brought nostalgic memories flooding back from my own eerily parallel early life: not in the experiencial sense, since that remains unique to the author who most brilliantly writes and emotes in response to his own needs and muse, but in the temporal, cultural and geographical settings of his story.
Robert Hart introduces us to the wonderfully diverse cast of family members and countless friends and others who influenced his life as he interweaves the wrenching factual details and secrets of his difficult childhood and upbringing with his ability to make light, humour and fantasy of his school days and rambunctious daily adventures, leaving us in no doubt of his extraordinary spirit and strength of character. That the author has ultimately come through it all with abiding and shining success and happiness leaves this reader in awe of and full of admiration for him.
I highly recommend this book.
Robert Hart introduces us to the wonderfully diverse cast of family members and countless friends and others who influenced his life as he interweaves the wrenching factual details and secrets of his difficult childhood and upbringing with his ability to make light, humour and fantasy of his school days and rambunctious daily adventures, leaving us in no doubt of his extraordinary spirit and strength of character. That the author has ultimately come through it all with abiding and shining success and happiness leaves this reader in awe of and full of admiration for him.
I highly recommend this book.
Rebecca's Secrets dragged me through every emotion and held me captivated with every turn of the page. The uplifting camaraderie of childhood friends and the exhilaration of their exuberant embracing of a life outdoors contrasted with the misery of a home of poverty and grime, the conspiratorial hiding of the truth by trusted adults, and a glimpse into the terrifyingly seedy underbelly of East End London in the post war years. There is something of Angela's Ashes here in the seeing of this world through the eyes of a child, with a child's turn of phrase - and the heart clenching knowledge that this is all true. In fact I know from being in touch with the author, who lived this life, that some of the more terrible scenes are in fact understated.
This is a superb book, beautifully written, that will make you nostalgic for childhood freedom never again within your grasp, and thankful that you escaped the horrors and emptiness this little boy experienced.
"Rebecca's Secrets"
Wow! I loved this book!
Once I started, I could not put it down. It is warm, funny and very real - a celebration of the strength of the human spirit.
I found myself relating to much of the author's childhood experiences despite the fact that my own background was completely different. The insight into the innocent and sometimes comlpex feelings of a child was fascinating.
The story of the beautiful boy with the world on his shoulders was full of soul and made me reflect on life and how we make sense of it.
Go get this book, you'll really enjoy it....
Once I started, I could not put it down. It is warm, funny and very real - a celebration of the strength of the human spirit.
I found myself relating to much of the author's childhood experiences despite the fact that my own background was completely different. The insight into the innocent and sometimes comlpex feelings of a child was fascinating.
The story of the beautiful boy with the world on his shoulders was full of soul and made me reflect on life and how we make sense of it.
Go get this book, you'll really enjoy it....
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