Few writers have published and been damned with quite the ferocity Julie Myerson was back in 2009 for her memoir The Lost Child. The book, which included descriptions of her 17-year-old son Jake’s cannabis addiction and her painful decision to lock him out of the family home, was debated everywhere from Mumsnet to newspaper opinion pages – “a betrayal of motherhood itself” – and even the House of Commons. Extended family members were doorstepped and Jake was approached by a tabloid to sell his story at a time when he was extremely vulnerable.
“A little bit of me broke,” the novelist says, looking back. She was no longer able to drive, and certainly wasn’t able to do live radio or TV (she had been a regular commentator on the BBC’s Newsnight Review). “It was terrible. My anxiety reached peaks that were just unmanageable. It was so shameful for me. I felt I had brought terrible things on my family through my work.”
