I Used to Be

Download or read book I Used to Be written by Mary Brown and published by Fantastic Books Publishing. This book was released on with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reclusive Maude, in her tattered and not-so-clean clothes from Oxfam, exists on the margins of society where she is seen – by those who notice her at all – as an eccentric old woman best avoided. While out searching for the elderly cat that is her only companion, Maude encounters Kayleigh’s Krew, a gang of teenage girls, who routinely bunk off school to spend their time on a triangle of waste ground they call the Tip. To Maude they look frightening; loud, confident, dressed in garish colours, but she makes the first approach, maybe in desperation for her lost cat, but maybe also recognising others at the margins of society. The story is one of terrible sadness but also hope. Mary Brown depicts the lives of two women who seem poles apart and yet are drawn together. She takes us inside their heads and their lives. It’s an incredibly well-observed story of Kayleigh’s teenage despair hidden behind a brash exterior; her adolescent highs and lows against which Maude’s story gradually unfolds and we see the grief and worry she has held on to for so long that it has become a prison from which she sees no escape.