I Wish You Weren't My Mummy

I Wish You Weren?t My Mummy is a hard-hitting tale of ill-treated childhood in a mixed-race home in a Lancashire village in the early sixties. Little Lorne tells her tale, as she is mistreated by her vicious but beautiful Indian mother, who in turn is beaten by her hot-tempered Irish father when he finds out about Mummy?s many affairs. Only eight, Lorne is obliged to witness her mother?s infidelities. But she?s a sweet-natured, resourceful girl with imagination aplenty, enough to create magical worlds for her retreat, and has touching religious faith, all of which carry her through the darkest hours. Outside the family home, Lorne has good friends to turn to, if she can reach out to them, or escape from the bedroom where she is frequently Mummy?s prisoner. This is a heart-wrenching tale of a child?s struggle with a nightmare mother, set against a backdrop of a forgotten rural England, less affluent but with a proper sense of community, which ultimately offers Lorne her escape-route from her hellish home life. In her first novel, Clarke pulls off an extraordinary tale of childhood suffering told from the child?s point of view, and the reader is entranced by the young heroine in her struggle to find love and acceptance.