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Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781472225092

Price: £13.99

ON SALE: 2nd July 2015

Genre: Biography & True Stories / Memoirs

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ebook

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From Alison Pick, the Man-Booker longlisted author of FAR TO GO, comes an unforgettable memoir about family secrets, depression, and the author’s journey to reconnect with her Jewish identity.

Shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize 2016

Alison Pick was born in the 1970s and raised in a loving, supportive family, but as a teenager she made a discovery that changed her understanding of who she was for ever. She learned that her Pick grandparents, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia during WWII, were Jewish, and that most of this side of the family had died in concentration camps. At this stage she realised that her own father had kept this a secret from Alison and her sister. Engaged to be married to her longterm boyfriend but in the grip of a crippling depression, Alison began to uncover her Jewish heritage, a quest which challenged all her assumptions about her faith, her future, and what it meant to raise a family. An unusual and gripping story, told with all the nuance and drama of a novel, this is a memoir illuminated with heartbreaking insight into the very real lives of the dead, and hard-won hope for all those who carry on after.

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Reviews

Readers interested in memoirs, Judaism, World War II history, or the Holocaust will certainly be captivated by Pick's engaging and, at times, heart-wrenching narrative
Library Journal
An honest book that ought to start a conversation
Jewish Chronicle
A gripping memoir of a woman who sets out to discover her heritage and finds her identity along the way (4*)
Lady
That rare memoir that I couldn't put down... a beautifully woven story of family, partnership, love and reconciliation, not just with one's past but with oneself
A. M. Homes
Brave and honest, this book offers an intimate portrait of a woman seeking to heal from inherited family trauma and find the beginnings of peace within her own soul.
Kirkus Reviews
I was touched by her courage and her candour
Woman & Home
That rare memoir that I couldn't put down... a beautifully woven story of family, partnership, love and reconciliation, not just with one's past but with oneself
A. M. Homes
Brave and honest, this book offers an intimate portrait of a woman seeking to heal from inherited family trauma and find the beginnings of peace within her own soul
Kirkus
Pick is a marvelous writer, and she vividly recreates the transformation of her relationships... Her path to conversion - complicated, nearly thwarted - is deeply moving in its culmination. Ultimately, this layered look at identity is a call for claiming one's true self
New York Times Book Review
A fascinating story
Independent