This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could.
A rare non-fiction blast from me, this time reprising Lorna Sage’s Bad Blood, her wonderfully eloquent, witty, heart-wrenching memoir which became a surprise bestseller.
Born in Hanmer, Flintshire in 1943, Lorna Sage spent her first years with her mother and grandparents in the village vicarage. Locked in constant combat, Thomas and Hilda were an ill-matched pair: she, constantly hankering after the sweet delights of the Rhonda where she was born, while he drowned his sorrows in communion wine and philandered. When Sage’s father returned from the army, the family moved to a council house. Sage was a lonely child, forever on the fringes, seeking refuge in books. Sexually alluring yet desperately naïve, she became pregnant at sixteen by Vic Sage, a fellow misfit. The two married and, determined to continue with her studies, Sage took her A-levels shortly after giving birth to her daughter. She won a scholarship to Durham University where both she and her husband gained Firsts, later becoming a successful academic.
Bad Blood won the Whitbread Biography Award just a week before Sage died from emphysema in 2001 aged fifty-seven. As she wrote in her Guardian obituary of her close friend, Angela Carter, who died of lung cancer at fifty-one “it’s no use pretending that she wouldn’t have produced new work just as wonderful given the chance”.
What about you, any blasts from the past you’d like to share?
You can find more posts like this here
Oh yes, I remember reading this many years ago and really enjoying it. Blasts from the past? No, I’m afraid not. I need to get better at re-reading. I’m always looking at that tottering TBR pile. But I really should change my habits. So many books deserve a second – or third – look.
Extraordinary life, she led. I know what you mean about the lure of the shiny and new.
All the same … must try harder.
I recently posted my review of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ even though I read it aaages ago! I loved it and it was nice to re-think about it.
@BookishBlondeX
A good one to revisit! It’s so easy to ignore all those brilliant books we’ve read over the years given the siren call of the shiny new ones.
I’ve heard the most amazing things about this. What a person.
I think you’d enjoy this, Elle. She achieved so much, given her circumstances. Those words she wrote about Angela Carter brought tears to my eyes. Two brilliant women!
When I was living in Norwich, England, it seemed everyone was speaking of Lorna Sage. She was loved around there, UEA and such, and her death was recent. In a strange twist of fate one of my best friends is quite close with the husband of ‘the daughter’ of Sage’s. I have a copy of Bad Blood and this prod has put it on my TBR list for real. Thank you.
That’s so interesting, Jennifer. I’m sure she was much missed not least by her daughter. I do hope you enjoy her memoir.
This sounds really powerful Susan. What a shame she died so young.
The words she wrote about Angela Carter seem entirely appropriate for her, too. Both smokers, sadly.
I’ve never seen this cover – how fantastic! This was one of the first books to turn me on to family memoirs, a favourite subgenre of mine.
I expect you have the original. I rather like this cover. She loved clothes, as you probably remember, and looks so stylish in this shot.
That’s what I was going to say: what a cover! I’ve got the original too. Like Rebecca, it was one of the books that put me onto reading non-fiction, which I’d stubbornly resisted for the most part until then (though not necessarily family memoirs for me, anything even slightly bookish instead, which I wouldn’t have initially thought this book would be, but of course it is). Her essays are wonderful too.
I try to have something non-fiction on the go, often history or politics, but I read this one partly because I sold so many when I was a bookseller and I’m so glad I did. Extraordinary life!
I remember when this was published and it was everywhere! Yet somehow I never got to it. It sounds marvellous – thank you for the nudge. Off to investigate the library catalogue…
I hope your library has a copy. Sage had quite a story to tell.
I was trying to figure out where I’d heard this author’s name before and then your mention of Angela Carter confirmed it. I think she wrote (or compiled?) a book about Carter many years ago…
Anyway, this memoir does sound very powerful…
She did write a couple of books on Carter, one of which could well have been a set of essays. Highly recommend this one, Jacqui. She led such an interesting life.
Read Sage’s book some years back. Loved it. Found it inspiring. Remind me of Jeanette Winterston’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit, and Deborah Orr’s Motherwell.
Such a brilliant woman! I’ve still not read Motherwell which I really must do but I can see the Winterson comparison.
Other great books that I have read over the years with the similar theme of female resilience, which I love to read about, include; UK”s Jill Tweedie’s ‘Eating Children’; Australia’s Sally Morgan’s ‘My Place’; and New Zealand’s Janet Frame’s ‘An Angel at My Table’.
I read the Frame years ago but it’s stayed with me. I can see you’re going to be expanding my tbr list!