Three of Us

Winner of the J. R. Ackerley AwardThis is the story of three people: Julia Blackburn, her father Thomas and her mother Rosalie. Thomas was a poet and an alcoholic, who for many years was addicted to barbiturates; Rosalie, a painter, was sociable and flirtatious. After her parents were divorced, Julia's mother took in lodgers, always men, on the understanding that each should become her lover. When one of the lodgers started an affair with Julia, Rosalie was devastated; when he later committed suicide the relationship between mother and daughter was shattered irrevocably.Or so it seemed until the spring of 1999, when Rosalie, diagnosed with leukaemia, came to live with Julia for the last month of her life.

A small masterpiece, much to be recommended, Blackburn has written an exceptionally perceptive and fascinating book, a tribute by a remarkable daughter to the resilience of filial love, A stunningly written memoir, The Three of Us contains all the mental and physical violations that cling to the bare bones of their shared past... Blackburn was never afraid of her father. It's very clear in the book - he is described even at his blackest moments with affection and warmth, Blackburn's first 16 years sound quite frankly too bad to be true. Nightmarish infact - though she details them in such an ingenuous, matter-of-fact manner that she somehow manages to make terrible events seem almost funny.... the resulting memoir is mesmerising and brilliant

Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction - Charles Waterton, The Emperor's Last Island, Daisy Bates in the Desert, Old Man Goya and With Billie - a family memoir, The Three of Us, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award, and two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a selection of which were published in My Animals and Other Family, and four radio plays, including The Spellbound Horses, which was broadcast in 2011.