by Eleanor O'Donnell

Created on: July 26, 2009   Last Updated: July 27, 2009

The Girl from Hockley by Kathleen Dayus is a moving and incredibly informative journey, written in an autobiographical style by a woman who lived through some of the most exciting times in modern history. Kathleen recollects her early 1900s childhood in poverty-stricken Birmingham to us readers in a manner that will grip even the most hardened of readers from the very first chapter or two.

What's so wonderful about this book is that it accurately recounts the era in which Kathleen Dayus grew up. It goes one step further than being a simple warts-and-all account, to include the good times as well as the bad. This objective narrative style helped to paint a vivid and historically accurate picture for me as a reader, and I couldn't help but relate to some of the fundamental difficulties that Kathleen faced throughout her life.

On the surface, this book deals mainly with giving us an insight into how Kathleen lived through her childhood years, but beyond that we readers are invited to see Kathleen through life's multitude of dilemmas; from having to choose between her principles and her welfare, to making the heart-wrenching decision to give up her babies in the hope that they may have a better life in care. It would be too easy to assume that such physically difficult times, as the war years were, simply revolved around food and shelter. Kathleen unlocks that myth for us younger readers, and shows us that life continued to be full of hope, aspirations and emotional turmoil in spite of the hunger and fear that monopolised their lives.

For me, The Girl From Hockley was both a history lesson and an emotional journey that I could not have gained from any other book I know of. As a child from a distruptive and somewhat broken family, Kathleen's story reminded me what is truly important in life. Family are the blood ties that bind us, but they are not who and where we have to be. There are simply who we have to learn from, and if we can find common ground and even love in those relationships, then we are truly lucky indeed.

Equally I found myself sorely reminded that despite my poor fortune in accordance with the times, I should be drastically more grateful for my present circumstances than perhaps I always am. As a single Mother, times can indeed be difficult for myself and my son; but I doubt they will ever be so difficult as they were for Kathleen Dayus when she handed her children over to a care home that could feed them. It was incredibly moving to realise the stark truth that such decisions can truly never be undone. Kathleen made something of herself, but even when her children came home to her - they were never truly hers again.

What you take away from this book will partly depend on your frame of mind and the state of your life at the time of reading it. But read it you really should; I can't think of another book that I've read in recent years to have both educated and moved me in as greater manner as this. Kathleen made a lot of mistakes in her life that many of us could learn from; similarly she demonstrated how hard work and ambition can pay off if you want them to badly enough. There is so much more to this book than just the life and times of growing up in poverty-stricken Birmingham, and that in itself would have made for a sufficiently good read.

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