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A review by scottiesandbooks
Oh Happy Day: Those Times and These Times by Carmen Callil
3.0
I’ve found myself very interested in family lineage and the history surrounding it lately. Therefore when given a chance to read this I jumped at it! Carmen Callil explores her roots- a story of injustice, emigration, colonial empires and the poverty stricken people of the nineteenth century.
I must admit that I found the first quarter of this book quite difficult to read. I spent a long time confused (doesn’t help that everyone had the same name back then so not the authors fault!) on who we were talking about and sometimes what was being talked about. I read this as a draft on kindle so potentially it was just the layout and if you get the finished draft it may be easier to read!
I loved the detail; but yet at times hated it. I felt like there were times when the author went off on a tangent for ages and when she finally got back to her main point I had forgotten exactly what this was. As much as I found the stockinger chat interesting I felt like it was over written and it could have been spoken about over less pages.
However, when Carmen started talking about her ancestor’s the Conquests I was hooked. Emigration to Australia is not something that is talked about often; it’s mostly to America therefore it really fascinated me! And also what life was like for people who were living in poverty in England. How they were treated as pests that they had to find a way to get rid of. The things that people were punished for; either by being jailed, whipped or shipped off to a foreign land are truly harrowing. All because of the injustices faced at the hands of the crown and government. If they did not steal a piece of bread for instance; then they would not have made it through the night.
I love the raw truth to what has been written. Being from Scotland our history is doom and gloom and we are taught about a lot of the bad things that the British Empire were guilty of. But as the author says herself, they only really mention the good things relating to Britain creating the Australian Colony. No one mentions how they destroyed the tribes who already lived there or the background of the people who actually helped to create it.
A heartbreaking and eye opening read; if you want a true account of what life was like for paupers in England and how life changed when they emigrated to the new world then definitely give it a read!
I must admit that I found the first quarter of this book quite difficult to read. I spent a long time confused (doesn’t help that everyone had the same name back then so not the authors fault!) on who we were talking about and sometimes what was being talked about. I read this as a draft on kindle so potentially it was just the layout and if you get the finished draft it may be easier to read!
I loved the detail; but yet at times hated it. I felt like there were times when the author went off on a tangent for ages and when she finally got back to her main point I had forgotten exactly what this was. As much as I found the stockinger chat interesting I felt like it was over written and it could have been spoken about over less pages.
However, when Carmen started talking about her ancestor’s the Conquests I was hooked. Emigration to Australia is not something that is talked about often; it’s mostly to America therefore it really fascinated me! And also what life was like for people who were living in poverty in England. How they were treated as pests that they had to find a way to get rid of. The things that people were punished for; either by being jailed, whipped or shipped off to a foreign land are truly harrowing. All because of the injustices faced at the hands of the crown and government. If they did not steal a piece of bread for instance; then they would not have made it through the night.
I love the raw truth to what has been written. Being from Scotland our history is doom and gloom and we are taught about a lot of the bad things that the British Empire were guilty of. But as the author says herself, they only really mention the good things relating to Britain creating the Australian Colony. No one mentions how they destroyed the tribes who already lived there or the background of the people who actually helped to create it.
A heartbreaking and eye opening read; if you want a true account of what life was like for paupers in England and how life changed when they emigrated to the new world then definitely give it a read!