Enjoyable read ( )

Most of this book was a fascinating account of life for the working classes in Glasgow in the 50s and 60s - that people were treated so poorly so recently in Scotland's history is appalling and depressing.

Sadly, Meg Henderson just seemed to lose interest. The big retrospective revelation toward the end didn't turn out to be that big since she'd given away most of what happened when she wrote about the period (perhaps she decided it wouldn't make sense without it). If it was meant to be about Peggy's life, why not leave it as that? Henderson seemed so determined to describe the circumstances of how she found out the details in the 90s that we got 25 years of random filler.

If Henderson had used it to describe her achievements against the odds following the collapse of working class family life, that would have made some sense. But we get no explanation of how she became a writer or how her and her husband ended up together - it was just confirmed at the end that this is what had happened, with nothing between going away to do VSO and the phone call from the hospital. So why the inclusion about how much she enjoyed writing while at school or how she couldn't help thinking about Rab?

Anyway, it was a nice idea and an interesting read in many places, but I couldn't help but feel that this was a book in which half of the pages had been randomly torn out.