What a Shame: 'Intelligent, moving and darkly comic' The Sunday Times

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A wry and zeitgeisty look at grief, heartbreak and the fix-you industry, What a Shame asks whether we can ever expect closure from our worst and most secret pain and fear. A must-read for anyone who has ever felt defined by a break-up. -- Harriet Walker It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (Non-fiction) by Mark Wolynn It's, of course, a tough read, challenging, with very emotional passages (e.g. the horrific suicide of her sister following years of domestic abuse -a reminder that, women from India and the Middle-East are three times more likely to commit suicide than their White counterparts...) but absolutely necessary to fully understand the impact of forced marriages. She escaped such a fate, but how many didn't and still don't? Beautifully written Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” Our relationships with our mothers are often the relationships that we replicate with others, particularly close ones and in working this relationship out do we work out the other ones, bringing hope, relief and healing. Shame is often the forgotten emotion but the havoc it plays on both our mental and physical health is quite profound. A brilliant exploration of the difficult consequences of shame with powerful coping strategies that can be life-transforming for women from breaking down barriers to love and parenting to building better relationships.

I always love a book that focuses on the importance of female friendships, because aren’t they just the best? There really is something so beautiful about the sisterhood us women feel. Would 100% recommend this book (to the right person, maybe not your aunt), can’t wait to read Abigail’s next masterpiece! I have gained so much from reading this book. I see myself more determined that I can achieve anything I put my mind to (by The Grace of God). Dempster E. The economy of shame or why dance cannot fail. Choreography and Corporeality. 2016. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-54653-1_10 Jasvinder Sanghera is the founder of British Human Rights charity, Karma Nirvana who support all victims of Honour Abuse and Forced Marriage. The best part of the book is his exploration of alternative treatments such as yoga and mediation to sports and drama — to literarily change the neuroplasticity of the brain so that recovery is achieved and survivors may fully reclaim their lives .

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Affecting, clever and blisteringly humorous... a riveting read about heartbreak, female shame and self-acceptance -- Sarra Manning * Red Magazine * Don’t get me wrong a book like this can feel a bit self indulgent at times but I enjoyed those passages because by then I had become invested in the characters and could appreciate being part of the inner circle of friends and their journeys. Shame keeps us from truly connecting with others and ourselves. However being aware of it and recognising its influence over us, reduces its power over us. We can then begin to accept ourselves unconditionally, opening the door to being true to ourselves.

Unbecoming is Michaels’s memoir of living with HIV and eventually succumbing to Aids. A delirious rage suffuses his writing. But it is the relationship between his anger and the sexual shame that was part of his upbringing as a gay man that makes the book almost unbearable to read. There are points where it feels as if Michaels is spitting in the face of the reader, but that violence and fury never feels gratuitous. There is a clear moral purpose to it. This is what you do to a human being when you make them feel ashamed of their very being, of their consciousness and nature. I was an adolescent when I first came across the letters of St Paul. Though I had been raised Greek Orthodox, at 13 I had joined an evangelical church in the hope that God would banish my shame. The shame of being different. The shame of hurting my immigrant parents’ honour. The shame of being gay. At that age, all I could hear from Paul was his admonishment in his first letter to the Corinthians that my homosexuality would banish me for ever from God’s love and grace. I battled with that for over two years before finally abandoning my faith. It was a relief to declare myself atheist, and a relief to begin the slow, difficult process of extricating myself from shame. Tender, unflinching and blisteringly funny, What a Shame glitters with rage and heartbreak, perfect for fans of Emma Jane Unsworth, Dolly Alderton and Holly Bourne. Lareese’s ReviewShe’s cried all her tears, mastered her crow pose and thrown out every last reminder of him. But that’s not helping.

Can't see a specific reading list above? Get something more tailored with our personalised book prescriptions within 48 hours. Emotionally intelligent, life-affirming and darkly comic, Abigail Bergstrom’s debut novel What A Shamehad us at hello! i have nothing much to say of this book apart from it was just okay. i believe this is bergstrom’s debut so it is completely understandable. it’s a normal reaction to me almost.This could so easily be a ‘poor me’ or ‘my crap life’ autobiography but it’s not. It’s much more a tale of survival, hope and determination to make a difference. It’s not about looking for sympathy or punishing those who’ve done her wrong – instead it’s much more about showing that there’s still a lot of honour crime going on in the UK and that just because we’re surrounded with positive images of British Asian life, it doesn’t mean that all of the horrors of the old ways have gone away. It’s also a way for Sanghera to publicise the charity she set up to deal with these crimes. In 21st-century Britain, there are still things being done to women that seem positively medieval. It’s also a tale of how no matter what your parents do to push you away, they’re still your mum and dad and that’s such a fundamental connection that you can’t just leave it behind you. We don’t know anything about the writer or writers of the Book of Job more than 2,500 years ago. Arguably, it is the first great work of existentialism. What is the meaning of our being on this Earth? Why do we suffer? How do we bear the shame of being unloved? One doesn’t have to be religious to identify with and be humbled by Job’s story. It is the antithesis of “new age”. Acceptance is never enough. There cannot be faith without doubt. There cannot be merit without sacrifice. An absolute corker - tender, sexy and weird. I can't wait to see what she writes next -- Michelle Thomas Cibich M, Woodyatt L, Wenzel M. Moving beyond "shame is bad": How a functional emotion can become problematic. Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2016;10(9):471-483. doi:10.1111/spc3.12263

It also explores the notion of social media and how nothing you see online is ‘real’ and everybody has something going on, everybody has their own “stuff” whether they share it or not.Dazzling . . . one of those novels where you think you’re exploring someone else’s pain, only to realise you’re exploring your own’