Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter

by Jenni Murray

'I feel I'm beginning a love letter. I'm saying things I could not have expressed even a year ago because there was a barrier between us. It collapses today in hospital when I hold my mother's hand and stroke her hair, and she says. 'Do you love me? I've often wondered.'

So begins Jenni Murray's memoir as she visits her mother in hospital. She is not, she acknowledges, the only woman to have had a difficult relationship with her parent, yet family history and the times in which they lived seemed to mitigate any chance of a true reconciliation between them.

With the benefits of the Women's Movement behind her, and the chance to go to university and have a career, Jenni broke free from her mother's constraints, but never from her influence. Determined to go her own way, she has always felt a sense of guilt: she has been a 'not so dutiful daughter'.

And then, after she began her memoir, Jenni's life took a distinctly downward turn. Her mother and father died within six months of each other, and she found that she had breast cancer. This book is a diary of that terrible year - and an extraordinarily honest and confessional memoir of a universally complex relationship: that of a child and her mother and her father.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 14, 2008

Reviews

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jenni Murray hails from the same home town as me in the UK, and thus I became inspired to read her memoir. Murray comes across in her work as a no-nonsense and forthright woman who is able to talk nostalgically about her childhood, now late parents and career, as well as packing a feminist punch on wider issues. She talks candidly and bravely about her personal issues with breast cancer and health issues in general. Whilst reading the book I really warmed to Murray and laughed and cried with her page after page. She draws you into an extremely emotive journey as she talks about her life and Northern English/Yorkshire roots and I now have a new grown admiration of her as a media figure and as a person. I would recommend this book to any keen reader of biographies who enjoys an authentic and ‘non show-off’ narrative voice. Murray’s experience of life is rich and there is a lot to be learned about family life and life in general through the reading of this book. I will pass it on without reservation to reading buddies. Definitely a five-star biography read!

[Sarah Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story looking at the way the mother-daughter relationship develops when the daughter does her 'own thing'. Extremely raw and powerful book. During the time of doing her 'own-thing' Jenny also had her own personal problems to work through. Great story but emotional too at times

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this memoir after I heard her speak in Manchester, and basically ended up kind of bawling (or fighting back the urge to bawl) in the corner because it's all about a mother-daughter relationship that is difficult. Because I'm reassessing my own difficult mother-daughter relationship (in which I'm the daughter), I thought I should really get to know what other people think about the whole relationship, and really identified with her. Although I'm not a fan of Women's Hour on BBC Radio 4, I did find myself impressed with what type of person she is--very strong--and with how much I identified with her feelings about her mother.

So I enjoyed reading the book, mostly as a kind of cathartic experience, and also started quizzing all my friends about their relationships with their mothers, which opens up wounds and feelings that they didn't know they had, and I didn't either. It's been a good start to what I hope will be a more intellectual set of books about this topic.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful autobiography charting a difficult mother and daughter relationship, written by a strong, feisty and independent woman. Jenni Murray hears of her mother's death the day she learned she would have to have a mastectomy for breast cancer and the book dovetails her reminiscences of her childhood with the account of her cancer treatment. I could relate to her northern 50's/60's upbringing and many of the photographs resonated with ones in my family albums. I would not recommend this book for anyone about to undergo chemotherapy, as she goes into detail on the harrowing side effects, although it did save her. Her descriptions of the "care" her mother received in her dying months are an indictmentof the NHS promise from "the cradle to the grave". On the other hand she has nothing but praise for the hospice where her father spent his last days - where she writes movingly of her feelings. Definitely not a run of the mill celebrity biopic!

[Darla Ebert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compelling as a read, but also sad. Even with all the positives in the author's life, she still sounded to have been quite unhappy due to the strictness of her mother. I think now she counts her blessings but she must have been quite a shock to her conservative parents when she was a teenager and young person. I liked the slice of life from the 60's and 70's.

[Ruth Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really know much about Jenni Murray, other than that she used to present Woman's hour.
Helen lent me this book and I yomped through it. Murray is a good writer and has led an interesting life. A lot of this book is about her relationship with her parents, particularly with her mother, which was not an easy one.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It was sad, touching, moving, yet uplifting. I feel I know Jenni – her voice is in my house most weeks – and now I know her story I have even more respect for her. Highly recommended.

[Penny Pedder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrible editing but still a brilliant book!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heart aching book. It's an all too ordinary story - middle aged mother of two whose mother and father both die in the same year as she has breast cancer diagnosed. However, in this case it happened to the doyenne of BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and just as she was setting out to write her memoirs.

Of course we share a name, even though she has done terrible things with hers. We were also born in the same place, I now realise with a sense of shock not that many years apart, and my mother and aunt attended the same school she did. Whap, some of the place names hit me (and it cannot be only the production values of the large print edition that made me think for a moment of my grandmother when viewing photos of her mother). I had not I think appreciated before how many (though not all) personal values we share - a testament to her radio skill perhaps.

There is nothing spectacularly awful in the book - perhaps that is why it is so moving - except perhaps a clear message that cancer care in the UK is generally an awful lot better than care for degenerative disorders. On reflection it is spectacularly awful that the end of her mother's life is sufficiently usual not to seem remarkable. It is an interesting account of the changes in lives between generations and the tensions for which those changes are at least partly responsible. The title derives from Simone de Beauvoir's Memoir's of a Dutiful Daughter although to be honest I feel Jenni only gave as good as she got.

I do have a slightly uneasy feeling that the book is something of a snapshot and not all her stated positions are ones she can back up and thus maybe more journalism than definitive reflection on her life. For example, there are frequent references to Susie Orbach's work on women and food/weight issues and an assertion that after a bad experience with appetite suppressants at university (after some choice remark of her mother's) she has never dieted is not backed up by Google.

[Hannah Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've only in the last year begun listening (religiously, via podcast) to Woman's Hour. I think it's fantastic and have come to adore Jenni, so when I spotted this read in a charity shop for less than £1 I snapped it up.

If you listen to Jenni on the radio you'll know already that she takes no prisoners, and that determination is a virtue she has in spades. Happily this is reflected in a seamless, month by month 'diary' which links her current year with her past all the way back from birth. What's surprising is not the honesty with which she tells her story, but the ability she has to recall the emotions and the exact way she felt at the time. On numerous occasions you feel like an indignant child/haughty teenager right there with her, reminded of the ups and downs of your own past. It is brutal at times, with regard to both her mother and the cancer - but with it you'll find you are giggling in the absolutely necessary dark cloud. It is a story about love and about self belief.

I can't fault it and couldn't put it down. Enjoy!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first official celeb biog (oh, other than Geri Halliwell's picture book efforts) and I loved it. Jenni mixes up current material about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, along with the death of her mother and father within the same year... and then also goes back and does the traditional auto-biog material too.
An engaging and honest account of growing up in the 50's with a difficult mother, and lots of meaty stuff about mother-daughter relationships, feminism, marriage and the like. Lots of amusing Woman's Hour celeb name dropping too (if you like that kind of thing - which I apparently do).

[Jennie Diplock-Storer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to say that i loved this book, which I did, because of the intense content.
This is Jenni Murray's memoir of the year in which her parents died within six months of each other & she was diagnosed & treated for breast cancer.
She reflects on the very difficult relationship that she had with her mother & the close one she had with her father. An only child, she was the focus of her mother's strict & old fashioned goals.
I will admit that, reading her description of her chemotherapy treatment, brought memories of my own back vividly, & it brought me to tears.
A very enjoyable, honest & well written book.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An honest account of her relationship with her parents. She comes across as a warm and lovely person, but not the easiest of people particularly because of her modern and feminist ideas which her old-fashioned parents didn't, or chose not to, understand. She also discusses her diagnosis with breast cancer and subsequent treatment which is a bit too close to home at the moment for me to want to dwell on. A good read.

[Sonja Trbojevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jenni Murray's no- nonsense views and broadcasting style are apparent here, in these memoirs. An honest, moving, fearless account, set out in months, each starting chronologically, and then looking back to the past events of each month. From her battles with a strict mother, her teenage years during the 60's, her mothers protracted suffering and death, I empathised, laughed, and cried along with her.

[Tracey- Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful autobiography that's heart-warming , yet sad at the same time.
Jenni Murray very open about her relationships with her parents , her mum having Parkinson's disease, her own battle with cancer and her dad's devotion to his wife and his loss without her.
An inspiring read!

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up because of the title: struck a chord! A story worth telling, doesn't matter that the author is well-known in UK as a radio interviewer (a good one). A powerful woman, Jenni Murray, who dearly loved her father and had a much harder time with her mother.

[Tarquilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in such a warm way it was like having Jenni Murray reading to you over the radio. An interesting story, I have even more respect for her having read it.