"Seven stories detailing child custody cases across nearly two hundred years, proves how desperately tragic these cases can be in this powerful, thought-provoking, and moving book."
Gosh, Custody is such a powerful read, personal and intimate, yet far-reaching and all-encompassing, it welcomes all as seven custody cases over nearly two hundred years are told as stories, reviewed and analysed. The often absurd and tragic nature of the legal system within custody cases is an incredibly difficult subject to negotiate. Author Lara Feigel acknowledges how traumatising it can be for all, and as she says, there are no winners. She has obviously completed a huge amount of research, and while focusing on seven particular women across time, it is clear that far more of these stories have become a part of her, particularly when stepping into modern cases. The women here, have been found wanting, and treated with disdain, control, and punishment. The children in these utterly heartbreaking stories are so often unheard, isolated and in effect punished themselves. Feminism and motherhood are examined, the devastating effects of parental alienation, unaccountable judges, and complex systems are investigated. This makes for incredibly emotional reading, it is explicit, yet thoughtful and balanced, and so joins our LoveReading Star Books and also sits as a Liz Pick of the Month. As historical and modern child custody cases merge into an explicit warning, Custody proves itself an immensely important and powerful book.
| Primary Genre | History |
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Custody is the first book for general readers on the history of child custody, an issue that affects so many lives and a question that seems fundamental to our experience and understanding of family. It's also an act of dramatic storytelling, blistering polemic and large-scale historical re-evaluation.
It is also an issue that has played a central, at times troubling role in the history of feminism. Custody probes the relationship between emancipation and care through a range of fascinating (and also heartbreaking, surprising and enraging) custody cases 1800 to the present in England, France and America.
This book is the story of seven women - Caroline Norton, George Sand, Elizabeth Packard, Frieda Lawrence, Edna O'Brien, Alice Walker, Britney Spears - who have fought for their children and been found wanting. It is also the story of the children who have lost the care they most need because divorce is at heart a macabre continuation of marriage in a new setting, with the battles of the marriage stoked into new levels of acrimony by the courts.
It's written as a book of stories because mothers enter courtrooms as storied figures. In custody hearings, the most intimate aspects of our lives as women and mothers get driven into the public sphere and are subject to public interpretation. Stories are told about us, and we respond with stories of our own; judges weigh these stories against each other and come up with stories called judgments, and then send us out into the world and tell us to cooperate with our opponent in the upbringing of a vulnerable child who fears precisely the strife that has just been whipped up by the court.
Ultimately it's a book that sees custody as the nexus where motherhood, ideology and power meet.
Custody features in the following genres: Liz Robinson's Picks of the Month, Recommendations, Star Books, History, Family law: legal guardianship, Feminism and feminist theory, Gender studies: women and girls, Family law: marriage, separation and divorce, Family law: children, Law and society, gender issues, Legal history, Family psychology, Family and health
Custody is available in Paperback, Hardback
Custody was written by Lara Feigel and published by William Collins an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Custody has 336 pages
