Before I Go (2017 posthumously) is the autobiography of
prolific British writer Catherine Cookson.
Catherine Cookson (1906-1998) commences
writing this autobiography in 1984 at the age of 78, with remembrances of her
illnesses and doctors.
She moves onto meeting her husband Tom,
their marriage in 1940, and the first year of the war when she had ‘ten blind
evacuees and mental patients in the house.’
Her bad physical health led to ‘unspoken’
years of ‘nervous hysteria’ in which she describes the stigma of mental health
issues that fed her world with ‘fear, hysteria and self-pity.’ She says she
wasn’t ’only absolutely fearing – I became aggressive!’ But this gives her an insight
into the minds of many people around her, suffering in silence, and being
misunderstood: ‘I have been living behind a facade for years.’
Cookson does reach a state of ‘peace
of mind’ through her writing and her constant companion Tom. He died less than
three weeks after her. Her autobiography is best when she begins to mention the
‘ripening’ of her talent as a writer. She first begins to draw, and write
stories for her landlady’s son.
It is Cookson’s honest account of her
physical and mental health, her suffering, and years of pain and torment. It is
also how her writing was a distraction from her pain, and why her childhood was
such a significant period for her. Overall though, the account is as grey as
the darkest day of England, which is a pity because England can also delight
and fascinate, with it’s beautiful landscape and history, but readers don’t see
anything outside of her four dark walls.
Although Cookson was a prolific
best-seller, starting to write in 1945 until her death in 1998, inspired mainly
by her childhood in the northeast of England, I have not read any of her
novels; not one of the 100 or so. And for me, it was difficult to read this
largely depressing autobiography.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom
(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest
Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The
Sudan Curse (2009).
 |
Comments
Post a Comment