"This enlightening, elegantly-presented blend of personal interviews and photographic portraits unlocks family life in all its complexity, with a view to fostering self-discovery."
Part of the forward-thinking Lessons for Life series from The School of Life, On Family explores the joys and challenges of family life in engrossing, intimate, enlightening style. Centred on 50+ interviews and personal portraits, individuals from all walks of life — and forms of family — here share their memories and experiences of family life.
The introduction shares how the book was born from commissioning five notable photographers — Mark Hobbs, Kate Peters, Marjolaine Ryley, Michelle Sank and Naomi Williams — to “collect realistic data about family life” through asking simple questions, with the ultimate aim of creating a book that might “help us reflect on our own family experiences with newfound candour and courage.”
The individuals featured certainly share their stories with candour and courage. Here we meet the child who feels they’re “just not good enough”, the grieving mother who lost her baby son to cot death, the young man who’s borne “the heaviest weight in the world” after losing his father, and a woman’s “roller-coaster” experience of becoming a stepmother, to share but a few of the book’s personal profiles.
With themed entries covering The Child, Mother, Father, Different Arrangements, Siblings, and Extended Family, each section concludes with “questions for self-exploration” that invite the reader to ponder profound topics, among them “how has a parent failed you?” and “what have you learned from your siblings?”
The result is an intimate, informative, elegantly-presented work that showcases and celebrates what family is and means, in all its diversity and complexity.
| Primary Genre | Self Help and Personal Development |
| Other Genres: |
Families are a mystery. Is everyone’s as complicated as ours? Is there such a thing as a ‘normal’ one? We generally only get to see the polished exteriors and are left to imagine what might be going on behind closed doors.
Here is a book that takes us on a tour around the reality of families. It provides a rare, privileged glimpse into private realms, allowing us a new, profound understanding of ourselves and others.
Comprised of 60 interviews and portraits captured by five supremely talented photographers – Mark Hobbs, Kate Peters, Marjolaine Ryley, Michelle Sank and Naomi Williams – the book introduces us to an extraordinary array of participants: new parents, stepchildren, siblings, the wealthy and the marginalised, the old and the young.
What surfaces is the astounding diversity of family life – and the number of commonalities too. Above all, we recognise the fundamental role that family plays in making us who we are.
This is a book for anyone who has ever wondered about their family or fantasised about being part of someone else’s – in short, this is a book for us all.
On Family features in the following genres: Lifestyle, Hobbies and Leisure, Health & Fitness, Self Help and Personal Development, Family and health, Local and family history, nostalgia, Photography and photographs, Popular psychology, The Arts, Biographies & Autobiographies, Biography, Literature and Literary studies
On Family is available in Hardback
On Family was written by The School of Life and published by The School of Life Press
On Family has 176 pages
£16.20
