And Amanda has come out of the other side, not necessarily unscathed, but a brighter, happier, more positive woman for it. Reading such memoirs gave me a lot to think about but I came to realise that even though we humans are miles apart, our lives are interconnected through similar experiences and the things we feel and go through. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the realisation hit that some situations hit much closer to home than others. I've been there before, too, and maybe, I'm there right now. Give signposts Find ways to help the reader along, especially if you have a complex plot and a large cast list. You’re our guide and we need to be able to follow you – and to trust you to tell us the truth. The motives for writing memoir vary widely, from greed (celebs can command lucrative advances) to propaganda (the author’s experiences set down in the hope of effecting social change) to catharsis (a healing of one’s own – and others’ – wounds) to memorialising (to preserve a story that would otherwise be lost). Whatever their motive, most of the life-writing students I’ve worked with over the years are level-headed. They write to make sense of their lives or to narrate a piece of family history. Sometimes they embargo what they’ve written, because the material is too sensitive; sometimes they publish it privately, for family and friends; sometimes it goes out into the world. The potential impact on others is an increasing consideration. All universities now have ethics committees, and life writing is treated much as sociology or anthropology would be, with consent a major issue: have the “participants” (ie any living person who appears in the memoir) given their permission to be written about?

It’s not just universities that want to be ethically clean and legally invulnerable. Publishers do too, and memoirs can be a minefield. It’s hard enough being honest with yourself (Mark Twain: “When a man is writing a book dealing with the privacies of his life – a book which is to be read while he is still alive – he shrinks from speaking his whole frank mind”), but when you’re writing candidly about others the stakes are even higher. According to George Bernard Shaw, “All autobiographies are lies” because “no man is bad enough to tell the truth about himself during his lifetime, involving as it must the truth about his family and friends and colleagues.” Choose your tense carefully The present tense will create immediacy but can inhibit measured reflection. The past tense is the more obvious choice but can seem too sedate and tidy. You may need both. We live in a world where, how others perceive us and the way we live our lives impacts on the way we feel about ourselves, making us mostly insecure. Amanda finally (after many years and much soul searching) overcame that pressure. It wasn’t easy, and it meant facing some difficult conversations with loved ones, things that had been left unsaid for far too long. Spanning the majority of her life and covering every topic from family dynamics, teenage angst, growing up, changing times, relationships, moving home and moving forward into adulthood and beyond. Each topic beautifully presented to us with sensitivity and humour making it really easy to relate to - even when those subjects were difficult or unknown experiences.Amanda’s story is beautifully written, inspiring on so many levels and highly relatable. I felt that what I was reading was so brave, bittersweet and honest. It is a book that every woman should read. It encourages you to always be yourself, to know that you are worthy of love and happiness and great things! This memoir was a rollercoaster to say the least, incredibly raw and real - the author really laid everything bare. It’s a story of real life, success, struggles and mainly hope for everything to come right in the end. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, but I think that’s what makes it a really special read. The book is very open and honest and whilst I feel like you get that reading a lot of autobiographies Amanda Prowse felt it went deeper. If you have never had a battle with addiction, your weight or both then you may not appreciate just how much I imagine it cost to not only deal with that but to then commit it to paper and share it with the world. I wanted to reach out and hug her because it is a battle like no other and despite some addictions being treated more with compassion and understanding food/weight gain is still very judged/stigmatized.

Remember God is in the detail The stronger our impression of something happening to a particular person at a particular time in a particular place, the greater our sense of recognition.Sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious and always entirely relatable, Prowse details her early struggles with self-esteem and ho