Castlebar Book Club
The Book Club meets once a month (usually the second Tuesday of the month) in Castlebar Library at 8.00pm. Check events page for next meeting. (Previous Book Club selections)
Book for October meeting, 2009
The Lost Child by Julie Myerson
The Lost Child
was originally intended as an account of Myerson’s search for Mary Yelloly, the daughter of a family of Suffolk gentry who died of consumption in 1838, aged 21, leaving behind an album of entrancing watercolours. Woven into Myerson’s research, however, and eventually overshadowing it, is a family drama involving her 17-year-old eldest son, whose use of (his term) or addiction to (his mother’s view) skunk (a potent form of cannabis) precipitated a series of crises so dire that his parents asked him to leave home. “In the end,” Myerson writes in her Foreword, “I let the two strands [of narrative] weave together on the page, just as they seemed to in life.”
The narrative alternates between the author’s pursuit of Mary Yelloly and the anguished progression of events at home, where her son’s behaviour swiftly progresses to chaos, violence and the almost complete breakdown of his relationship with his parents. Around these events, Myerson explores wider themes of loss, motherhood and love. It is in these terms that Myerson depicts herself explaining her book to her son when she gives him the manuscript to read: “Don’t worry, it’s not so much about you – or at least it is – but it’s more about me really. A mother’s story… It’s a book about how much I love you, though I realise you may not choose to see it quite like that.”
There is an imbalance between the strands of narrative, of which Myerson herself seems aware. While the account of family breakdown is urgent and vivid, she strains to convey to the reader the particular quality of Mary’s story that so inspired her. The encounters with the Yelloly descendants are oddly bland; the ghostly conversations with Mary’s shade are pallid by comparison with the dazzling intensity of her feelings about her son. As an account of the painful tension between motherhood and writing, The Lost Child is devastating in its candour.
The suggestion is that it was Myerson’s duty to subordinate her instincts as a writer to her duty as the parent of a troubled young adult and remain silent. But if one may not write candidly about the experience of motherhood, then about what else may one not write? What other human relationships might be deemed unsuitable for exploration by writers?
The Myersons have tried to explain her motives in writing The Lost Child. That was a mistake, for it distracts attention from a fundamental question about the book: is it literature, or merely titillating journalism?
To which the answer is that, despite the flaws of structure noted above, it is not journalism, but a serious, writerly, self-critical account of what it means to feel that, despite love and hope and good intentions, you have failed as a parent, and that the child you bore (while still eerily, painfully familiar) is lost to you. Which is not the same thing as saying that it is the complete truth. Art can only ever hope to present a version of the truth. And that is what Julie Myerson has done.
If writing about the experience of motherhood is ‘monstrous selfishness’, what else is off limits?
The Telegraph
Honest, affecting and noble
The Guardian
Julie spells out her pain in prose that's so pure, so literal and so terribly engrossing it makes you weep. And she doesn't flinch from revealing everything - including her own insecurities and inadequacies as a mother by the end of this excruciatingly sad book, it is very clear that she didn't do this for art, but for love.
Daily Mirror
Urgent and vivid … A serious, writerly, self-critical account of what it means to feel that, despite love and hope and good intentions, you have failed as a parent, and that the child you bore (while still eerily, painfully familiar) is lost to you. Which is not the same thing as saying that it is the complete truth. Art can only ever hope to present a version of the truth. And this is what Julie Myerson has done.
Daily Telegraph
An aching, empty-nest memoir: a mother mourning for her uncomplicated little children, now grown, whom she could care for, write about without comeback, love - and control.
The Times
Myerson's motivation is anything but base. She could have disguised her material in a novel, but she wanted to make sense of reality, to understand the chaos that has taken over her family. She wanted to help others, herself and her son. Any family for whom cannabis has been a wrecker, even if they would not dream of exposing their situation in the same way Myerson has, will be grateful to her for having done so. She may have been rash, but she has also been courageous. She has tried to write honestly about a nightmarish situation and a subject that never seems to get the attention it deserves.
Observer
Yelloly, however ephemeral, fulfils a function - she is a lost girl, one who cannot be revived, from a family ravaged by that Victorian scourge, consumption. And Myerson's real, parallel lament is for a child who falls victim to our modern version of consumption - the slow ruination of a much-loved child through drugs.
Financial Times
A campaigning book If the question is whether a woman has a right to tell a story that is also, actually, her own - a book reviewer can only say yes. And add that anyone who reads it will struggle not to be profoundly moved.
Independent
The Lost Child is not really about a teenage boy. It’s about a writing mother compelled to tame the chaos of family life with words. In one of the book’s very few haunting images Myerson describes how, if she refuses to give the boy any money, ‘he sits on my study floor, his whole body blocking the door, his eyes on my face, smiling because he knows I won’t be able to write a word.’ No wonder she paid him to be able to use his poems.
The Spectator
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