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Fatherless
A memoir by Phil Barber
When his Polish war veteran father denies paternity, the infant Phil is left with his poverty-stricken Mother Annie in a 1950s West Yorkshire mill town. Burned by loss and desertion, Annie's mental state frequently breaks apart. Before his third birthday she releases Phil to a distant orphanage. A series of subsequent separations take their toll on this spirited, imaginative boy who - at every turn - feels violently cast off and set adrift.
In this memoir of life under the roof of a 1960s orphanage Phil Barber has travelled with love and a wry humour into the dark earth of his tangled roots. Fatherless is an account of a displaced boy reaching through a lonely childhood and desperate adolescence to forge his way to manhood. Phil's story is a winding river of struggles for identity, and a search for beauty and belonging among the oceanic pain of feeling exiled from society.
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Email: phil@philbarbercoaching.co.uk
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Testimonials
‘It touches on the experiences of young boys everywhere’.
G.S
‘Beautifully written, one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read’. A.W.
‘Fantastic book! Couldn't put it down, felt truly inspired that no matter how bad things are you can move forward and make a different life’.
L.F.
‘Once you start reading this book it’s hard to put down.’
I.C.
‘The self-insight and the honesty with which the author shares his childhood memories of rejection and loss with the reader is both humbling and inspiring.'
M.B.
‘I was expecting it to be depressing and even sordid in parts but somehow the excellent writing tells the story unflinchingly without making it a harrowing read. It details the day-to-day life of a kid growing up without parents or warm home atmosphere, without pathos, so that you find yourself fascinated by the events not often brought down by them’.
A.S