In the second volume of her memoirs, the prize-winning author Janice Galloway reveals how the awkward child introduced in This is Not About Me evolved through her teenage years, living with her stoical mother and domineering older sister.

Every morning Cora "painted on eyebrows like gull-wings" before going out to work as a secretary, but when at home, she proves capable of setting fire to Janice's hair in a fit of pique. To the child and adolescent Janice, abrupt violence is just another facet of her existence, and is hardly given more attention than night-time reveries over the fate of Yuri Gagarin, "his face smeared by console lights", the thrill of illicitly borrowing the goriest tomes from the library, "Spartacus, Caligula and Vlad the Impaler", and the sudden importance of pop culture awareness and effortless prettiness: "My blazer sprouted Bowie badges .On the one hand, both titles are witty comments on the memoir genre, asking questions about truth and memory and acknowledging how much must necessarily remain hidden. Similarly, both books have a constant, unsettling undertow, because of an unpredictable antagonist waiting to strike.

For Janice in All Made Up, it is from Cora, the mercurial sister who, at 20, left a child and husband in Glasgow to move back in with her mother and five-year-old Janice in Saltcoats. That said, I appreciated learning about some of the ways that makeup has played a role in politics and protests. The author notes that women who are perceived as beautiful are considered more intelligent and capable and that domains that is considered feminine are less respected ( such as makeup.

She walks into the living-room to show off to her mother, but finds Cora there too, and as proud mother prepares to capture the moment with a camera, the elder sister throws a plate of stew (yes, stew again) over Janice and the frock. It was when she turned away again I felt it, a surge in the chest that threatened to drag me down some awful drowning well of rage and grief. Journalist Nudson offers a strong argument that makeup affects everyone, whether they wear it or not.

It covers endless ways makeup has been used in countries across the world, from women wearing red lipstick in defiance of Hitler during WWII or to oppose government action in Nicaraguan protests, to the use of makeup by Transformistas in Venezuela, to Japanese women using it to maintain femininity as they entered the workplace during WWI, to skin bleaching in India, to government control of appearance in North Korea…. The book covers a few female cultural icons from different countries who used their looks to their advantage and yet had to conform to the rigid beauty standards of their time. Galloway has stoutly (and correctly) refused the insulting label ‘misery memoir’ and yet a vein of tightly-controlled unhappiness runs unavoidably through her narrative, erupting into rage (the reader’s) every so often. The abuse Janice Galloway experiences at the hands of her older sister, Cora, is made explicit ("a crack like a toffee hammer hitting home and the bridge of my nose singing with cold, dense pain") and is viscerally shocking. There are almost certainly books to be written about happy, well-adjusted people just getting on with life, thriving with the help of love and support from all around them.In my opinion, the title of this book should have been BEAUTY POLITICS: HOW APPEARANCE KEEPS (AND PREVENTS OTHERS) FROM POWER. By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Truth about Neighbours star Troy Beckwith's death at age 48 as family announce there will be no funeral: 'He fought a tough battle. Galloway became familiar with family conflict and strife – and the family curse of feeling shame – very early on, but proved herself resilient enough to simply keep her head down, and in a book most of the time, as a means of coping.