Run, Mummy, Run by Cathy Glass

Run, Mummy, Run by Cathy Glass
Buy Run, Mummy, Run by Cathy Glass at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: General Fiction
Reviewer: Katie Blow
Summary: When Aisha, a successful and hard-working career woman meets Mark, she thinks she's finally found the man of her dreams and can look forward to a loving, happy and peaceful future. But Mark soon becomes aggressive and violent, subjecting Aisha to years of pain and misery and a growing sense that she may never be free again.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 304	Date: April 2011
Publisher: Harper
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-0007299287
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Aisha is a young, beautiful and successful woman who has worked hard to get where she is. But there is one thing missing in her life: a man. Still living with her parents at the age of thirty and inexperienced when it comes to men, Aisha wonders if she will ever find a husband. But then she spots an ad in the paper and plucking up all her courage and determination, she decides to reply. This could be her only chance at love and she doesn't want to waste it.

When Aisha gets put in touch with Mark, she soon discovers that he is everything she could possibly want in a man – caring, loving, affectionate and handsome. She thinks she's finally found the man of her dreams. We all make mistakes but unfortunately for Aisha, hers will not just ruin her life; they will also ruin her children's too. When Mark becomes violent and abusive Aisha blames herself for not being a better wife and does her best to live up to his high expectations.

Like every mother, Aisha's main concern is her children. But after years of physical and mental abuse, she doubts whether she has the strength left to protect them. But strength is what Aisha desperately needs if she and her children are to have any hope of freedom.

This is a truly remarkable story of one woman's journey through an abyss of violence, cruelty and degradation that will have you hooked from the very beginning.

Before reading this book I took one look at the cover and the title and prepared myself with a box of tissues and hardened myself ready for an emotional read. I was expecting to have to endure pages and pages describing the abuse faced by Aisha and her children, which would leave me weeping and raging at the human race. But I couldn't have been more wrong.

This is certainly an emotional read, insightful and beautifully written. The subject of domestic violence is indeed a harrowing one but the focus of the novel is not on the abuse, but on Aisha. The reader gets a glimpse of her happy childhood and the years she spends as a successful young career woman. We then follow her as she takes a giant leap of courage and contacts the dating agency. We wait with her in anticipation as she stands in a rainy London high street, waiting to meet Mark for the first time. We watch with uneasiness as she finds herself falling hopelessly in love with him. And we are there with her the first time she is hit, when the abuse begins. The novel skims over seven years of the abuse Aisha suffers, during which time she gives birth to her second child and takes us to the crucial moment when she must decide between a chance of freedom or a lifetime of pain. But even if she chooses freedom it is doubtful whether she has the strength left to run after it.

I found the structure of the novel very effective. We begin the story near where it actually ends, when Aisha is looking back over the years, reflecting on what is lost and what could have been. She is still a woman under the control of her husband, a woman who wants to please and be the best wife she can be, a woman who one might easily think is weak and submissive. But as we flick back to her earlier years as an intelligent and hard-working career woman, we see that Aisha wasn't always like this.

There aren't many books which have me hooked from the very first page and which I feel obliged to read late into the night but this was certainly one of them. Cathy Glass is such an elegant and insightful writer and I wish there were more like her. Considering the ugliness of the content, she somehow achieves beauty and grace in her writing without diminishing the novel's gravity.

You may or may not need a box of tissues by your side to read this book but if you're anything like me, you'll certainly enjoy it.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.

Further Reading: Disfigured: A Saudi Woman's Story of Triumph over Violence by Rania Al-Baz

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You can read more book reviews or buy Run, Mummy, Run by Cathy Glass at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Run, Mummy, Run by Cathy Glass at Amazon.com.

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