annethology
  • Home
    • About Annethology
    • About me >
      • A little more about me
    • About my books
    • Author talks
    • Contact me
    • Forthcoming events
    • World Mental Health Day
    • Privacy
    • Sign up for my newsletter
  • Sugar and Snails
    • Acknowledgements
    • Blog tour, Q&A's and feature articles >
      • Birthday blog tour
      • S&S on tour 2022
    • Early endorsements
    • Events >
      • Launch photos
      • Launch party videos
    • in pictures
    • Media
    • If you've read the book
    • Polari
    • Reading group questions
    • Reviews
    • In the media
  • Underneath
    • Endorsements and reviews
    • Launch party and events
    • Pictures
    • Questions for book groups
    • The stories underneath the novel
  • Matilda Windsor series
    • Matilda Windsor >
      • What readers say
      • For book groups
      • Interviews, articles and features
      • Matty on the move
      • Who were you in 1990?
      • Asylum lit
      • Matilda Windsor media
    • Stolen Summers >
      • Stolen Summers reviews
  • Short stories
    • Somebody’s Daughter
    • Becoming Someone (anthology) >
      • Becoming Someone (video readings)
      • Becoming Someone reviews
      • Becoming Someone online book chat
    • Print and downloads
    • Read it online
    • Quick reads
  • Free ebook
  • Annecdotal
    • Annecdotal blog
    • Annecdotal Press
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists
    • Reading and reviews >
      • Reviews A to H
      • Reviews I to M
      • Reviews N to Z
      • Nonfiction
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

The Wacky Man by Lyn G Farrell & a rant about punishment

5/5/2016

13 Comments

 

Fifteen-year-old Amanda is in a bad way. Unwilling or unable to leave her bedroom, unwashed and unloved, she sits on the grubby floor, pulling out the hairs from her head one by one. She has no need for relationships, no use for her mother except that she leave her meals and cigarettes outside the door. Curtains drawn, with little sense of time, her head is full of thoughts of how intolerable the world is as she relates the story of her own unhappy life.



Picture
It starts with Barbara, from Lancashire, meeting Irishman Seamus at a church do. She likes him, but she’s put off by the coldness and coarseness of his family when they travel to Ireland for his sister’s wedding. Yet she’s excited when her dad agrees that she can stay with his sisters in Manchester after a dance. She’s somewhat less enamoured when she realises that he’s got her drunk in order to have sex with her. When they find out she’s pregnant, her parents, and especially her father who sees “love as a matter of possession”, are reassured by Seamus’s offer of marriage. In the hospital, a new mother of twin boys, all she wants is to go back to the life she had before (p39):

Barbara feels like she is one of these babies strewn across the ward, needing to hold onto the comfort of a mother. She feels her heart beating, and its rhythm, thump-thump-thumping away, makes her feel that she is being controlled from the inside out. You don’t live life, she thinks, life lives you … She’s nothing now but a receptacle for her husband to empty himself into or babies to be pulled out of.

Barbara copes through a fug of antidepressants and a cultural commandment to keep up appearances. Outside the home, Seamus is popular, despite the backdrop of racism, and seen as a hard-working family man. Inside, he switches from playmate to tyrant in an instant and soon Barbara and the boys dread him coming home. By the time Amanda is born, he’s beating them regularly. The girl doesn’t stand a chance.

Set some time in the 1970s/80s, the family receives occasional visits from the authorities but, even when Seamus almost beats the life out of Tommo, and Barbara flees with the children to a refuge, nothing changes much. At almost seven, Amanda is assessed by a psychologist, because, despite her obvious intelligence, she’s not learning, who appears to turn a blind eye to the bruises on her legs.

What’s most shocking for Amanda, and also for the reader, is that she’s so full of self-loathing, and her mother so ineffectual, that things don’t improve when Seamus finally abandons the family to return to Ireland. Her brothers left home at only sixteen, bullies make school unbearable and her father’s nastiness is fixed in her head.

The eponymous wacky man is not Amanda’s father (he would be whacky), nor the “shrink” she mentions in the first sentence, but the truant officer, who is actually a minor character in the novel. Likewise, the shrink – various shrinks – seems to serve the purpose, rather like Chris Edmonds in my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, of highlighting how well-meaning professionals can miss the point, leaving the child so much more vulnerable.

The Wacky Man
is a well-written and disturbing novel that tells an authentic story of a girl failed by her family and society at large. I’m not sure, with such bleakness, I can truthfully say I enjoyed it, but it is a good read and it’s given me another fictional therapist to add to my growing list. Thanks to Legend Press for my review copy.

At the time that I was pulling together this review, Irene Waters posted another Times Past memoir prompt, on the contentious issue of punishment, thereby reviving my ambivalence towards memoir. Having also called in at a couple of stops on Lyn Farrell’s book launch blog tour, at Never Imitate and on Linda’s book bag, I was aware that The Wacky Man is based on her childhood. While I doubt even Seamus would consider his violence towards his family as legitimate punishment, I see his behaviour as an extreme form of an approach to discipline that was widely justified at the time I was growing up. While many parents would know how to stop themselves going too far, and many children would not be damaged by the odd slap, there’s something perverted about a society that condones acts of physical aggression towards its more vulnerable members.

My own memories are (perhaps tellingly) vague, but I don’t believe I was punished a great deal (although I do recall the indignity of, at seven years old, the entire class having to hold out our hands as the teacher went round and slapped us with a ruler in turn). But I wasn’t unaffected by the overall climate which led to me growing up timid, risk averse and hypervigilant to the moods of the powerful, such that I could read the minds of others better than my own.

Behavioural psychology clearly demonstrates that rewarding desired behaviours is more effective in bringing about change than punishing undesired behaviours. Even without that evidence, surely it’s crazy to think we can teach morality by hurting or humiliating people. So I can sum up my attitude to corporal punishment as simply Don’t!

Creative writing involves showing a situation and leaving the reader to take whatever message from it they wish. While it’s possible to guide the reader in a particular direction, if it’s too preachy they’ll give up. But I’m not prepared to bare my wounds if I can’t control how others see them.
Which, of course, I can’t.

I’ve got until the end of this month to decide if I want to turn that memory into memoir. But I think my only options are fiction and a rant.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
13 Comments
Sarah
5/5/2016 11:07:38 pm

There is so much to say, I don't know where to begin. You surprised me throughout, revealing layers as you reviewed. (Not sure if that was your intention...) Then I got to BOTS (based on a true story) and about fell out of my chair.

I don't know if I could read this. I know it would be an interesting read, though. And, yes, seems you've found another example of family and society failing the child.

This stuck out re punishment: "there’s something perverted about a society that condones acts of physical aggression towards its more vulnerable members." It wasn't common when I was growing up but certainly not unheard of. And my parents' generation? Spare the rod...

Reply
Annecdotist
6/5/2016 08:04:49 pm

I’m not sure the layers were intentional, but I like the idea that that’s how it they come across. My thought was that for a BOT it was extremely well written – it must be hard to develop the distance from a childhood like this to be able to write about it in a way that readers will want to read. I suppose, however, knowing that it’s based on the authors experience takes away a little of the bleakness – although there’s not much redemption for the character Amanda in the novel but it’s a relief to know the author’s, out the other end!
I think it will take several generations to move away from that approach to child rearing, if we ever do, because it’s hard for parents who have been on the receiving end of corporal punishment themselves, whatever their intentions, not to inflict it on their kids, if only at times of intense provocation / anger / anxiety. I hope you’ll join in Irene’s project as I imagine we oldies will have had similar experiences!

Reply
geoff link
6/5/2016 03:00:04 pm

Sounds a bit of a misery book to me. Not sure I want that, however well written. And I recognise your reaction to the harsh world of punishment that we saw around us at school and in homes; I think, like you, I developed a sense of when my behaviour might put me at risk and some times, nowadays, when I feel a bit risque it' in a little way a reaction to that atmosphere.

Reply
Annecdotist
6/5/2016 08:09:03 pm

Perhaps, Geoff, but it’s not a misery book like a misery memoir, which to me (although it’s quite possible I haven’t actually read any!) are written for sympathy or perhaps revenge – in a way the parents are more rounded characters than Amanda with an interesting back story.
It’s nice you’re feeling able to make up for a risk averse childhood and spread those wings!

Reply
Irene Waters link
8/5/2016 01:00:34 pm

Butting in here re misery memoir. I don't think they are written for either sympathy or revenge but rather as a tale of triumph - something that others can benefit from.

Norah Colvin link
7/5/2016 01:48:17 pm

Wow, Anne. What a review and what a story. I followed the two links to Lyn's blog tour. It is great that the author seems to have come out the other end, if not unscathed, able to live a productive life. She is obviously a strong character. It doesn't end that well for everyone. If the book can open discussion on this terrible aspect of society - abuse of children - that will be a good thing. There have been many publicized sexual abuse cases, but not many, except for extremely horrific cases, related to abuse by parents. I think it is probably more difficult to identify, accuse and commit to trial, people from one's family. It doesn't seem right when families are meant to stick together, to protect. I guess this is what happens to abused wives also. A feeling of guilt, that the "victim" self is somehow to blame.
I understand your reticence to share, and in doing so reveal, personal accounts through memoir. You do an effective fiction, and a pretty good rant. You don't have to add memoir to your list.

Reply
Annecdotist
7/5/2016 04:18:55 pm

Thanks, Norah, maybe I’ll extend my ranting repertoire!
Abuse within families is very difficult to address. For Amanda, in the novel, although she knew what was happening was wrong, she had been labelled as the bad kid at school so didn’t trust that any adults outside the family would support her. And the extended family, although genuinely concerned, I suppose felt a degree of shame that kept the thing covered. Still a difficult area but at least now there is more of a mandate on professionals to speak out. But I do feel for social workers who are condemned if they act and condemned if they don’t. In extremely tragic cases of course the child actually dies but what annoys me then is when the family blame the professionals instead of sharing the responsibility for not putting a stop to the abuse.

Reply
Irene Waters link
8/5/2016 12:58:10 pm

It sounds like a disturbing novel and like Sarah and Geoff don't know that I would want to read it. I don't see this kind of abuse. however. as punishment, but rather the deeds of a violent man who cannot control his temper. I would guess that when corporal punishment was an accepted form of punishment this may have happened slightly more than it probably still does today and these types of people will not be guided by what the law says you can and can't do. I'm glad to hear that the author, whose own life this is based, has survived it and I wonder whether the book was written for some sort of catharsis.
Sadly having worked in ICU for many years I know that this type of abuse and sexual abuse of children by family members is more common than we realise. At one point we had such a run of attempted suicide, all a result of child abuse, that I can remember ringing my parents and thanking them for not having done that to me. At that point it seemed more the norm than the childhood I had experienced.
Thank you for sharing your rant. You don't have to write memoir unless you want to. Your rants are perfectly fine and I love it that you get the discussion going because I think that is what is important. I think one of the purposes of memoir is to allow us to go into the future and a knowledge of social history allows those that don't have an understanding of past methods and lives have nothing to base judgements on. Memoirs can play an important part in this. Once again I am starting to waffle.

Reply
Annecdotist
10/5/2016 11:22:14 am

Thanks for your detailed comment, Irene, which is certainly not waffle. While I agree that there are people who will be brutal whatever the culture, because of their own disturbance, I think that a lot of punishment meted on our generation as children was from adults who were also unable to control their tempers. Perhaps knowing that their peers will disapprove of such behaviour is one way of helping them keep control. I also think that as long as we condone violence as a means of resolving conflict (for example through war – not that I think the alternatives are easy to find) this kind of behaviour can continue.

Reply
Charli Mills link
12/5/2016 08:26:21 pm

Irene and Anne, you both know how to get a discussion rolling! Given the choice to write memoir or fiction, I prefer the latter. However, I'm not sure I'd ever want to fictionalize an abusive childhood. Books and imagination were what saved me from my own so I think I regard that as sacred ground -- fiction is a place to create, build, learn, grow, triumph. Mind you, I'm not into Pollyanna fiction, but facing the cave and coming out with an elixir. However, Irene shows me the value of memoir, too and though I feel shaky at even the thought of writing about punishment, I might step up to the challenge to test my wings. And Anne, I owe you a book review, having plowed through Sugar and Snails (my God, I couldn't put it down once I started reading!) and I want to say, it resonates as a hero's journey. Diana certainly confronts her own dark cave though she doesn't want to answer the call to go to Cairo and all it means confronting, but she arrives with her own elixir in the end. Amazing book you wrote and you deserve to be in the company of all great debut authors. Keep writing fiction! :-)

Reply
Annecdotist
13/5/2016 03:22:47 pm

Thanks, Charli, I’ll be interested to see if you decide to go with Irene’s prompt. I think we’re similar in our reasons for avoiding memoir, but with some differences in how we use fiction, I suppose I’m partly using it to transform my experience into something else – perhaps how many people turn to memoir.
Thanks for that lovely feedback on Sugar and Snails – I wasn’t sure if you’d already read it but we are keeping quiet because it wasn’t your thing (and I’m sure the community of Rough Writers you’ve established could tolerate that). And yikes, I suddenly understand the hero’s journey!!! You’re quite right, it does fit and, even though I talk about Diana going on a metaphorical journey when I talk about the novel, I never saw it. (Would make an interesting case study!) Now I’ll be looking for parallels everywhere (though I still don’t think it fits my next novel) – let’s just hope I’m not on my real life hero’s journey towards writing a misery memoir, having certainly resisted the call yet somehow continually chewing at the idea.

Reply
Charli Mills
16/5/2016 09:56:37 pm

Ha! That's hero's journey is authentic to anyone who goes through a situation and is transformed or makes a choice in the end. I like the idea of finding it in unexpected stories! Let's hope neither of us end up on the writing end of penning a misery memoir. Unless you get bit by the memoir bug. Too much fun and exploration to be had in fiction. ;-)

Annecdotist
17/5/2016 02:43:02 pm

I think I’ll stick with fiction, but you never know! Readers still seemed to be curious about the real story behind the fiction.




Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
    Picture
    Find a review
    Picture
    Fictional therapists
    Picture
    Picture
    About Anne Goodwin
    Picture
    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
    Picture
    My latest novel, published May 2021
    Picture
    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
    Picture
    Picture
    My second novel published May 2017.
    Picture
    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
    view books
    Picture
    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
    Picture
    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

    Your comments are welcome any time any where.

    Get new posts direct to your inbox ...

    Enter your email address:

    or click here …

    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Tweets by @Annecdotist
    Picture
    New short story, “My Dirty Weekend”
    Picture
    Let’s keep in touch – subscribe to my newsletter
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Popular posts

    • Compassion: something we all need
    • Do spoilers spoil?
    • How to create a convincing fictional therapist
    • Instructions for a novel
    • Looking at difference, embracing diversity
    • Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books
    • On loving, hating and writers’ block
      On Pop, Pirates and Plagiarism
    • READIN' for HER reviews
    • Relishing the cuts
    • The fast first draft
    • The tragedy of obedience
    • Writers and therapy: a love-hate relationship?

    Categories/Tags

    All
    Animals
    Annecdotist Hosts
    Annecdotist On Tour
    Articles
    Attachment Theory
    Author Interviews
    Becoming Someone
    Being A Writer
    Blogging
    Bodies
    Body
    Bookbirthday
    Books For Writers
    Bookshops
    CB Book Group
    Character
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Classics
    Climate Crisis
    Coming Of Age
    Counsellors Cafe
    Creative Writing Industry
    Creativity
    Cumbria
    Debut Novels
    Disability
    Editing
    Emotion
    Ethics
    Ethis
    Family
    Feedback And Critiques
    Fictional Psychologists & Therapists
    Food
    Friendship
    Futuristic
    Gender
    Genre
    Getting Published
    Giveaways
    Good Enough
    Grammar
    Gratitude
    Group/organisational Dynamics
    Hero’s Journey
    History
    Humour
    Identity
    Illness
    Independent Presses
    Institutions
    International Commemorative Day
    Jane Eyre
    Kidney Disease
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Lyrics For The Loved Ones
    Marketing
    Matilda Windsor
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mental Health
    Microfiction
    Motivation
    Music
    MW Prequel
    Names
    Narrative Voice
    Nature / Gardening
    Networking
    Newcastle
    Nonfiction
    Nottingham
    Novels
    Pandemic
    Peak District
    Perfect Match
    Poetry
    Point Of View
    Politics
    Politics Current Affairs
    Presentation
    Privacy
    Prizes
    Psychoanalytic Theory
    Psychology
    Psycholoists Write
    Psychotherapy
    Race
    Racism
    Rants
    Reading
    Real Vs Imaginary
    Religion
    Repetitive Strain Injury
    Research
    Reviewing
    Romance
    Satire
    Second Novels
    Settings
    Sex
    Shakespeare
    Short Stories General
    Short Stories My Published
    Short Stories Others'
    Siblings
    Snowflake
    Somebody's Daughter
    Stolen Summers
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    The Guestlist
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Toiletday
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Picture
    BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from havens.michael34, romana klee, mrsdkrebs, Kyle Taylor, Dream It. Do It., adam & lucy, dluders, Joybot, Hammer51012, jorgempf, Sherif Salama, eyspahn, raniel diaz, E. E. Piphanies, scaredofbabies, Nomadic Lass, paulternate, Tony Fischer Photography, archer10 (Dennis), slightly everything, impbox, jonwick04, country_boy_shane, dok1, Out.of.Focus, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, Elvert Barnes, guillenperez, Richard Perry, jamesnaruke, Juan Carlos Arniz Sanz, El Tuerto, kona99, maveric2003, !anaughty!, Patrick Denker, David Davies, hamilcar_south, idleformat, Dave Goodman, Sharon Mollerus, photosteve101, La Citta Vita, A Girl With Tea, striatic, carlosfpardo, Damork, Elvert Barnes, UNE Photos, jurvetson, quinn.anya, BChristensen93, Joelk75, ashesmonroe, albertogp123, >littleyiye<, mudgalbharat, Swami Stream, Dicemanic, lovelihood, anyjazz65, Tjeerd, albastrica mititica, jimmiehomeschoolmom