Pieces of Molly: An Ordinary Life

By Judith Edwards and Judith Gurney

Pieces of Molly is a memoir with a difference. Told in the first and third person, it offers a perspective on the self not often found in autobiographies. Molly can be seen as "everychild" -- the author and the reader too -- showing the everyday pains and difficulties encountered in all our lives. Judith Edwards' unusual approach to her memoir offers a multi-faceted piecing together of a life, in which she acknowledges the unreliability of memory, and examines how we often recreate ourselves to fit in with others' hopes and desires as well as our own. Molly's journey starts as everyone's does, in the womb. In most memoirs the first ten years are swiftly passed over, but here Judith shows us development from conception onwards as Molly begins to grow up in a tiny village on the east coast of England, which we see through her eyes; the eyes of a child born at the end of the Second World War. Pieces of Molly is a map of one small girl's mind, as the barely subdued ordinary terrors of childhood lurk around her world, a girl surrounded by the vibrant life of a working farm at a time when rapid developments are forcing that world to change. Molly is a curious little detective, keen to find out more about life and love. For her, the shadows behind the doors only make sense in hindsight, and buried family secrets come to light as she struggles with the problem of how and who to be in the world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1782202188
• ISBN13: 9781782202189
• Release Date: December 2014
• Publisher: Karnac Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 9.0"