Book description
The only daughter of alcoholic parents, novelist Pip Granger spent
much of her childhood outside looking in.
No strangers to the demon booze, her parents were deeply involved in
a passionate relationship that rose to exciting highs and plunged to
terrible and often frightening lows. Drink explained the series of
crises, the furious rows and life-threatening accidents Pip had to
contend with, and it also explained why her home life was so very
different from that of most other people she knew. Just after her
first birthday her family was evicted from their cottage in Sussex for
non-payment of rent - a pattern that was to recur throughout her
childhood. Home became a place best avoided, and soon Pip was spending
time with her ne'er-do-well father in cafes, snooker-halls and other
low dives in London's Soho where she made a series of lasting
friendships with the unlikeliest of people.
Brave, funny, original and totally authentic, Alone is a
heartbreaking book about alcohol abuse, parental neglect, and the
courage of a little girl to find her own way through a trouble-filled world.
Part of Pip Granger's early childhood was spent in the back
seat of a light aircraft as her father smuggled brandy, tobacco and
books across the English Channel to be sold in 1950s Soho, where she
lived above the Two Is Café in Old Compton Street.
She worked as a Special Needs teacher in Hackney in the 1980s,
before quitting teaching to pursue her long cherished ambition to
write. She now lives in Somerset with her husband.
