Love Hurts: The True Story of a Life Destroyed

by Jeff Randall

A few seconds ago, I wanted to die. Now I know the reality is I just don’t want to live. I never have from the moment I started falling, twenty-one and a half years ago. I’m alive. Shit. Jeff Randall originally wrote his memoir by hand, the ink spattering on the page whenever he was writing about something painful and looping beautifully whenever he was recalling happier moments. He wrote it in a matter of weeks and delivered it to his estranged wife in an attempt to explain the demons that had haunted him for so long and that had been responsible for destroying their relationship. Love Hurts is the powerful true story of a boy whose tormented childhood was characterized by violence and isolation. He was raised in a fragmented, chaotic family, in a world where debt and poverty were the norm. From a young age, he yearned to escape but was sucked into an ever-decreasing spiral of bad choices and self-loathing. This brutally honest book charts the life of a boy who just wanted to be loved but when love eventually came he was too damaged to recognise it. Only by confronting the nightmare of his childhood and coming to terms with his past has he been able to stop his downward spiral.

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

Reviews

[Gail murray]

A true account of what jeff went through

[Larissa]

Starts off good then gets boring

[Anita]

Definitely worth a read, no literary masterpiece but a strong and pure message