Fantastic.
I re-read Oranges this month for bookclub and was disappointed. It was not what I remembered.
I'd first read it when the TV programme, which I watched with my mother, came out. JW is the same age as my slightly older sister.
This memoire on the other hand was brilliant; the Oranges part was near enough to what I remembered. It made sense. It was also very moving.
The post Oranges bit, despite the 25 year gap was gripping and made me warm to JW all over again.
What this book also did, which I wasn't expecting, was rekindle memories of my own childhood and growing up in a Northern, industrial, working class family. Like her I read Engels and Marx as a teenager.
JW is right when she laments what's become of the North.
Thatcher began it's destruction, the money grubbing 80s, desolate 90s and the impersonal 21st Century have wiped a way of life, of living, of caring, from the world.

Another unexpected surprise from this book was JW's connection with Shakespeare and Company, Kilometer Zero, Paris. It had me rushing to my own library to find my Bantam Classic translation of Cyrano de Bergerac; my favourite play of all time. I have a slightly foxed 1898 First Edition in the original French.
In November 1988, during the weekend in Paris when I became engaged to my beloved Hubbs, he bought me the Bantam version from Shakespeare and Company, and yes, he remembers.

JW is right to put so much emphasis on love.
I hope her future holds more finding love than lost losses.