The Memory Of Bridges

by Roberta Dewa

(Glass Tortoise, £7.99 )

ROBERTA DEWA grew up as a single child during the 1950s and ’60s in the village of Wilton near Nottingham and this memoir depicts a life which is relatively circumscribed, marked by the usual changes of school, illnesses, family celebrations and family deaths.

But it culminates in Dewa’s mental breakdown before she embarks on a university course as a mature student, where she finds solace and fulfulfilment in writing. 

In what is akin to a long prose poem she lyrically describes her life as a child, teenager, married woman and writer. Of course, a life does not have to be replete with drama, sensation and trauma to provide the material for a riveting memoir, but there needs to be something beyond the purely personal to ensnare the reader. 

Dewa describes in meticulous and often poetic detail the minutiae of her life but description alone is not sufficient to keep a narrative flowing. 

Yet what is absent is any real social or political context. A cursory mention of Margaret Thatcher or the miners’ strike hardly fulfils that demand and provokes the question why should this particular life be of interest to a wider readership if it is not embedded in a social context.  

Profoundly solipsistic, parochial and depressing in its mundanity, The Memory Of Bridges is unleavened by a spark of humour. It is a missed opportunity to reflect on childhood, mental illness, family and society in a broader sense.

Dewa describes her book as “the reclamation of a troubled past and a return to the village of my childhood” and that is what it is — a personally therapeutic voyage but hardly one with profound resonance for others.

John Green