It's Now My Time

5 stars By turns heartbreaking and uplifting

By Vincent O. Connoron July 26, 2017 Verified Purchase

By turns heartbreaking and uplifting, I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it.

Throughout this book, you will meet with me on several occasion for coffee while I tell you about the events that shaped my life and how they affected me. I hope I did justice to my family.

I don’t remember every detail of my past and wish people wouldn’t ask. I blocked out a lot and what is mentioned here is what I remember how things were. I know that I am the last girl out of the original family I was born into, and that everyone has left me here to face life by myself.

Poem from book:

I Carried The Hate, Instead

Ever since I could remember

There has always been a feeling

Of a dark void of disappointment

I always felt that I was never good enough

For anyone to be around,

I would carry the burden of all my family’s mishaps,

I guess that’s why I was born,

To be the one, to last and to be the one to carry it all,

Like Christ carry the cross, I carried the hate instead

I carried it on my shoulders

I carried it in my heart

I bared the burden of everyone’s mistakes

I was judged, kicked, laughed and rumored

When all I ever wanted was to fit in

Their sins became my sins

That I packed and stuffed away

For years I wasn’t me

I was them.

5 stars An engaging collection

By G H Neale on 5 August 2017

Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

A very simple device is employed in this collection, one that cannot be ignored. You are addressed in a homely way to engage with JAnn over coffee whilst she weaves a painful biography, telling you a whole series of calamitous events, ones that would have floored most of us. By the end, after reading of these tragedies you are spinning, wondering how it was ever possible for what you have read to have been written, for most of us would not have got past the first two or three blows of assault.

The style is simple, grammatically clear, and with themes that can be readily understood - if only for their commonality. That is to say, we empathise herewith. There is positivity throughout, most noticeably at the end: one gets a sense of JAnn’s determination. This is what keeps this small collection together and this is what powers it on to its end.

So does it provide a release for the reader? Sort of, but probably not as much as it does for the author, although that is not meant in a pejorative way, for there is much to be enjoyed, reading how she overcomes all; and one feels that she needed to have written this excision before she can go onto and explore other ideas. I am looking forward to those.