Eating Children

Eating Children by Jill Tweedie, is an exceptional autobiography told with humour and a lightness of touch that belies all the events that take place in this woman's life. Sent to a finishing school by her parents, she went off to live in Canada where she met and married a man.

The story turns truly sinister when her husband kidnaps their children and she spends years trying to find them, funding private detectives by working as one of the first female columnists on the Guardian. Her tale is so skillfully told, so funny though you daren't laugh, that at times you think she's making it up. The horror and the tragedy of course, is that she isn't.

I found it quite by accident in a little Romanian bookshop when I was travelling there with my brother, years ago, pre baby. There was only a small selection of books in English, mostly classics. I picked up Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and my curiosity couldn't resist Tweedie's title.

My brother read it first. "What's it like?" I asked him. "Namby pamby rubbish?"
"No," he said, "It's really good."

I've given you the plot, it's an incredible story, you should read it yourself.