What She Don't Know Can't Hurt Me!: 'A Northern Life' by a L Mottley is Released

Book title: "A Northern Life" by A L Mottley

"What she don't know can't hurt me"

Sample from book (opening text):

So, there I was. Ten days old and already hitting the bottle.

The 60's were tough, and the 60's in Manchester, even tougher.

Me mam was having some problems too, and I don't mean rubber rings and stitches either. Not only was she an Unwed Mother, cue screeching violins and close up on face, but the hospital staff had their suspicions that my father was not from 'round these parts.' Cue close up on baby's face. Deadpan.

Now begin the entertaining trials and tribulations of the author as the eldest of four girls and a boy, born of a British mother and a West Indian father. This is the era where Political Correctness meant MP's not having punch-ups outside polling booths, and when you didn't risk arrest for eating a banana at a football match. A Northern Life is a wonderful character study of what life was like growing up as a working class 'half-caste' in the 1960's.

Despite discomfort (sharing a bed with multiple sisters) and poverty (the rent man calling when there was no cash in the house), Amina displays the fortitude needed to cope with the 'tough love' of a Mancunian Mam. There are enough comedy gems to script a whole TV series - a rubbish chute being made into a slide to post a sister down, forging Mam's writing to avoid PE and inadvertently making the school suspect physical abuse at home, and never questioning why the pillow factory employed only ladies on the nightshift. No-one can possibly read the tinned tomato incident without laughing out loud.

While being an extremely funny book, it's also a fascinating period piece recalling a world that was disappearing faster than bits of batter on fish and chip night.

Amina is currently working on the sequel, "A Northern Life" (Abroad And Back Again) describing her adolescent years in Barbados.

Sample from new book:

"I was still a northern girl but trying to be posh and failing miserably. We had a maid but Mam used to clean before she arrived because 'I'm not having anyone call me a dirty cow'."

"A Northern Life" by A L Mottley is published by Any Subject Books in Kindle, Epub, PDF and Paperback formats.

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-909392-53-3
Purchase link: www.anysubject.com/a-northern-life

Contact publisher: clive@anysubject.com (Clive West)
Publisher: Any Subject Books, Coventry, UK

61,800 words, 158 pages, price $4.99 (e-book)

Please contact the publisher for review copies or more information about the author (full interviews available by request).

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