A Family Torn Apart

Prior to reading this book, I had never heard of Cathy Glass or her work. She's written quite a few of these books that are described as her “fostering memoirs.” I had an icky feeling about the fact that she published stories about children that had been in her care, basically from page 1. I suspect there are issues of consent, which is why she publishes under a pseudonym and changes the names of her charges and their families, but she provides lots of very specific details about the family, regardless.

This whole thing felt exploitative.

In addition, it's kind of amazing that I got through it as fast as I did, considering Glass narrated the daily routines of herself and the two little girls in her care, practically minute by minute, which was basically just doing normal parenting things and setting up video chat with their mom, while throwing in bits about the children's social worker and the previous children she'd fostered. On top of that, this was written during the height of Covid, so there's constant talk about restrictions and social distancing and hand-washing, and I don't think an editor ever looked at this because there was a lot of repetition and grammatical issues that an editor would have caught in an instant.

I guess on the plus side, I did learn a lot about the foster care system in the U.K.? But I will never willingly pick up another of her books.