Bad Blood

Whitbread Award Winner: A memoirist "e;conjures up her claustrophobic childhood in the small Welsh village of Hanmer with wit and unsentimental clarity"e; (The New York Times). The bad blood had missed a generation. You're just like your grandfather, my mother said.Blood trickles down through every generation, seeps into every marriage. An international bestseller and winner of the Whitbread Biography Award, Bad Blood is a tragicomic memoir of one woman's escape from a claustrophobic childhood in post-World War II Britain and the story of three generations of a family-its triumphs and its darkest secrets. With wit and a dose of self-deprecating humor, Lorna Sage's prose brings to life a period-the 1940s and 1950s-that continues to influence and shape society in the twenty-first century. As a portrait of a family and a young girl's place in it, Bad Blood is unsurpassed."e;Her father was off fighting in World War II, her mother off in her own dreamy rerun of adolescence, so young Lorna hung onto the 'skirts' of her vicar grandpa, a histrionic, bitterly intelligent philanderer . . . Sage finds such delicious ironies in all the awful detail that readers can't help but be entertained., wickedly . . . perfect book club reading."e; -Publishers Weekly (starred review)"e;She lifts your spirits even as she hurts your heart."e; -Daily Telegraph"e;Deeply affecting and beautifully written."e; -People"e;Evocative, enthralling, often hilarious."e; -Los Angeles Times"e;A superb memoir of a daughter of the '50s who got knocked up, but not knocked down."e; -Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air