Ready to discover another great book for this 2022? Take a look…
Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Michael Joseph
Rating: 5/5
Amazon, Hive
About The Book
Meredith Maggs hasn’t left her house in 1,214 days. But she insists she isn’t alone.
She has her cat Fred. Her friend Sadie visits when she can. There’s her online support group, StrengthInNumbers. She has her jigsaws, favourite recipes, her beloved Emily Dickinson, the internet, the Tesco delivery man and her treacherous memories for company.
But something’s about to change. Whether Meredith likes it or not, the world is coming to her door . . . Does she have the courage to overcome what’s been keeping her inside all this time?
My Thoughts
I’ll start saying that this is a powerful and bitter read; sad but empowering. Slow paced but with interesting characters, it’s impossible to not want to hug Meredith and cheer her for how brave she is.
Since I started reading this book I was glued; I wanted to know more about Meredith and why she has been living for the last 3 years of her life inside her home. She tells everyone that she is “fine”, but she knows that she is not, she only doesn’t know how to change it.
We’ll read this story in first voice, with flashbacks from Meredith’s past and childhood and how everything collided in the moment she is. I don’t think there’s just one thing that made Meredith stay at home, a bunch of little things that made her one day impossible to step outside and stay within the walls.
We’ll not only meet Meredith’s story but a few other characters that will start being part of her life; all will bring their own little grain to Meredith’s character and try to help her. Will they be successful on their path to help Meredith? You’ll have to read the story to know the answer!
This is a brave book; talks about rape, depression, abuse and mental health without taboos or prejudices. A fresh way to show the reader that having a mental health illness is not something we should be ashamed of, we should be able to talk about it and never be bullied or discarded for it. We all in one moment or other in our life struggle and need help, it’s time we are open about it.
Are you ready to meet “Meredith, Alone”?
About The Author
Claire was born in Bath, Wiltshire and moved to Kent when she was six. she has always loved drawing from an early age and remembers being asked by her school mates to draw rabbits for them! After school she studied Fine Art at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury where she achieved a BA degree in Painting. She moved to London in 1995 and stumbled through many different jobs until she studied children’s illustration at Putney School of Art. Here Claire produced her first dummy book for Small Florence, which was then published and started her dream career as an author illustrator.
In 2007 Claire wrote her own course on writing and illustrating picture books which she has been teaching ever since, and now at the House of Illustration. She regularly visits schools and enjoys drawing for children.
Claire’s new title ‘The Best Bit of Daddy’s Day’ will be published in June 2016.
‘Monkey and the Little One’ was shortlisted for the 2015 Junior Design Awards and listed as one of the top ten best new picture books during Independent Book Sellers Week 2015.
‘Back to Front and Upside Down’ won the 2013 Schneider Family Book Award from the American Libraries Associataion. The award honors an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.
‘Lucy and the Bully’ won the 2009 Paterson Prize for Young People and ‘Small Florence’ was short listed for the 2010 Mad About Books Stockport Schools’ Book Award.
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