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Summary: A touching work of astonishing honesty, courage and insight
Review: A mystery writer by trade, Campbell Armstrong takes us into the deepest mysteries of the human heart with this fearless look into his own failings as a husband and father and into the lives of two extraordinary women, his terminally ill ex-wife and her long-lost daughter.It's hard to know what to praise most about this book - its searing candor, its profound, warts-and-all humanity or its affecting portrait of one of the "little people" who generally go to their graves unheralded despite their great impact on the lives of others. Celebrity magazines would do better to fill their pages with unknowns like the subjects of this book. How can one life's sad and wretched end hold such transforming power? Read I Hope You Have a Good Life to find out. Be warned, though; this book is emotional dynamite.
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Summary: A Book to Cherish
Review: I absolutely loved "I Hope You Have a Good Life." It was one of those special books that I couldn't wait to get to after I'd put my girls down at night. I'd reach the end of a chapter, look at the clock and know I should get to sleep, but then make the "mistake" of reading the first sentence of the next chapter and be hooked. And now I'm sad it's over. Campbell Armstrong tells this amazing story with honesty, humility, and love. I was deeply touched by the short but richly fulfilling reunion between the two dying women--his ex-wife and her long-lost daughter. Tears were pouring down my cheeks last night as I turned the last page. I got up to wash my face, and then I went in to my little girls' rooms to watch them in sleep for a minute and give them one more kiss. Then I got into bed and let my mind drift thru so many memories I have of my own mom. "I Hope You Have A Good Life" definitely reminds you to cherish it ALL.
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Summary: I Hope You Have A Good Life aka All That Really Matters
Review: I just read All That Really Matters the UK version of I Hope You Have A Good Life. What a wonderful book! I would definately give more than 5 stars if I could. The book is a true story of a woman who gave up her baby girl years ago. Well she gets married, to who else, Campbell Armstrong an aspiring writer, and has kids, 3 boys, of her own. After they move to Phoenix, they end up getting divorced and Campbell moves back to Ireland where they are originally from, while Eileen stays with the boys in Phoenix. Years later Eileen finds out she has cancer. Across the world, a woman named Barbara also finds out she has cancer. She has been looking for her real mother for a long time. When she finally finds her mother and they both discover they both have cancer, the illness doesn't matter anymore because they have found each other. This is a story of loves lost and found along with lifes ups and downs. What a magnificent story. I have also read Concert of Ghosts by Campbell Armstrong. Also a descriptive book!!!
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Summary: A Sort of Grace
Review: In a memoir every bit as compelling as his signature fast-paced literary thrillers (Jig, Jigsaw), Campbell Armstrong recounts a true and often heartrending tale of love and loss, guilt and redemption. In I Hope You Have a Good Life, Armstrong tells the story of his former wife Eileen, who after a valiant struggle with lung cancer died in February, 1998, and of Eileen's long-lost daughter Barbara, who--given up for adoption when Eileen was seventeen--relentlessy sought a mother she never knew across a gulf of four decades and seemingly insurmountable odds. Artfully intertwined with this is the story of a man on the lam from himself and his demons, and a family fragmented because of it. Almost as if we are in one of Armstrong's thrillers, we are swept from the sooty streets of Glasgow in the early sixties to mod London's cultural revolution later that decade; and from the winter blizzards of upstate New York in the seventies to the sledgehammer heat of a recent Phoenix summer. Through these times and locales Armstrong weaves the strands of a young woman's whispered confession in a candle-lit tent and, forty years later, her whispered deathbed request; of a writer's obsessive quest up from the dissolution of alcohol and drugs to find some sort of grace; and of another woman's search for her mother urged on by an impending sense that time is running out. As the strands converge, the writer achieves a sort of redemption through a promise finally kept, and the woman finds a mother's love at the last moment. In an age of literary "catharsis," the memoir has become a sort of industry too often based on the kind of neurasthenic twaddle spun from what granny did to one in the woodshed at the age of five. I Hope You Have a Good Life is a welcome departure from this. Campbell Armstrong stares at the sun without blinking, writing with skill and unstinting honesty of personal failings and the struggle to put things right, of promises exacted and at long last kept, and of a family reunited by death and by the transcendent power of enduring love.
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Summary: Superb...
Review: There is so much I could say about this book: how it affected me as I was reading it, how I've come to consider it every day since reading it, why I had such a strong personal reaction to it. But the simple truth is that this is best surprise, the most satisfying read, I've had all year. I Hope You Have A Good Life is Campbell Armstrong's biography of his ex-wife, Eileen (with whom, after their divorce, his remarriage and subsequent sobering, he rediscovered a lasting bond). Eileen died recently, and in her last months, made Campbell promise to write this biography for her. It is the story of the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption, and how, 40 years later, as Eileen was dying of cancer, this daughter found her. But it is so much more than a story of an adopted woman finding her birth mother. Readers will be startled by the honesty with which Campbell recounts the history of this family. Campbell and Eileen had three sons during their marriage, before Campbell's addictions and affairs brought the union to its inevitable end. Campbell realized too late that he'd failed as a husband and father, that he'd essentially given up the things that should matter the most. What's remarkable about this story is how lucky he has been--that he was able to forge new relationships with these people whom he'd hurt the most. And that he savored every moment with Eileen, and that he continues to strengthen his relationship with his sons. This unassuming little book lives far beyond its 250-some pages, and will hopefully find a wide audience. Campbell Armstrong has given us something to treasure. I Hope You Have A Good Life is more than Campbell's promise kept to his ex-wife--it is his physical act of redemption for the pain he may have caused her in her lifetime, and a morality tale for the rest of us, who may have longer to make sure we are taking utmost care with those we love. Don't miss out on this incredible book!
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Summary: An Extraordinary Book
Review: This is simply one of the finest memoirs I've read in years; and an important book on serious topics - marriage, divorce, adoption, alcohol, and illness. Armstrong has a lot of wisdom to impart, and does so in a simple yet affecting style that will often break your heart.
Do not miss this book...it's a work of art.
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