Old Bakery Books.co.uk

The death of Andrea Ashworth's father brought a dramatic change in her five-year-old life: violent stepfathers; an itinerant childhood; and emigration to Canada. This book is a memoir of a child's resistance to the cruelty of her surroundings and evokes the north of England of the 1970s.

Scotsman
'This is a brilliant book. Brilliantly written, brilliantly thought, brilliantly remembered'

Margaret Forster, Sunday Telegraph
'That rare thing, a book that is needed...Andrea Ashworth is a role-model without parallel'

Independent
'The brightest first book I've read for some time; sharp, energetic and quite without self-pity'

Sunday Times
'Poignant but not depressing, and written with elegance, humour and restrain'

Independent on Sunday
'Once in a House on Fire is full of energy, wit and a child's wide-open gaze...a remarkable book'

Daily Mail
`One of the most extraordinary stories you will ever read of the triumph of the human spirit'

Independent
'Ashworth has the poet's power to make language, and therefore experience, seem new'

Observer
`Andrea Ashworth's book recreates and repeats [the] child's unblinking, peeled and unnerving sweetness'

Telegraph
`This often funny, and extraordinarily even-minded, autobiography is a testament to the powers of survival'