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Lost Child (2009)

by Julie Myerson(Favorite Author)

3.08 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1408800772 (ISBN13: 9781408800775)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Bloomsbury

review 1: I finished this book last night. It is quite upsetting and also complicated because it has two themes. I have read many of Julie Myerson's novels and she is a very talented writer. She also had a weekly column in a quality newspaper. The title of this book refers to her eldest son who becomes addicted to 'skunk' when he is 15. This part of the book has caused enormous pain to the author and her family, especially because of the influence of the elder child on her two younger children. The other 'lost child' is a female of a large family living in the 19th. century who dies young of consumption (tb was the 'curse of the Yelloly family'). The author is involved in a huge research of the historical background of Mary Yelloly who died when she was 21, many of her siblin... moregs afflicted with the same disease. Interspersed with the research is the present trauma of what is happening to her son and the anguish he causes to his parents and the decisions they have to face with a child who has become impossible to live with and the decision to make him leave the family house. The situation becomes increasingly traumatic for the author and her husband. They seek professional help and the effect on their lives and the eldest son to me is unbearable. Julie Myerson was crticised very publicly after 'The Lost Child' was published in 2006. I wonder how many families have had to 'banish' a teenager in this way. I learned a lot reading this book!
review 2: As the mother of five children, this book really touched my heart and made me ache for families torn apart by drugs -- and all families mourning the loss of a child, either through death or to addiction. This is a compelling story that captures the intense emotions inherent in such life struggles as it moves back and forth between the story of a young artist who died at 21 and the author's own teenage son, whose life was derailed by drugs. less

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