Very reminiscent of Angela's Ashes in style, intensity of suffocating circumstances and understatements. Beautiful and very precise descriptions of girlhood. I had to keep reading this book just to see if anything changed at all in the course of the story. Unfortunately nothing did - as often in reality. Whereas Andrea sticked literally to her mother for a long time, she suddenly goes off to Oxford, without any clue to this change in her. This book leaves me with many questions about the characters and their motives: What happened to her mother in the past? What moves Andrea? Is she a super-hero surviving this terrible house without any emotional or intellectual scratches? She seems to be able to make friends, study, draw, write, pass exams without having to study for it and be nice to her mother and sisters as well. I was waiting for her to have a good fight with her sisters or her mother. But they just huddle together and stick to each other. Probably one of the results of such a childhood is a memory that keeps emotions apart from events. This book did not enlighten darker sides of people and this does not seem so realistic as the story in itself is. Nevertheless I enjoyed getting involved!

Andrea Ashworth is brave, smart, and amazing. I will later tell you why. First, I will discuss the base of the plot of the book. I have read this book about her childhood and teenage memoirs of life with her family, and know now what she went through. Following the death of her real father, she lived through a situation with two different abusive stepfathers, who emotionally and physically abused her mother, and occasionally her and her younger sister. This type of situation is an oft kept "secret" in this world-a subject that does not often get talked about; a problem that very rarely gets "cured". Against a backdrop of East London, and Canada, Ashworth recalls her tale. It is amazing that Ashworth, who is now an adult, remembers details far back into her childhood so vividly. It is amazing that she got through that part of her life without too many "visible" scars. I will not tell too much more of the story, you must read it for yourself. But again I say that Andrea Ashworth is brave, smart, and amazing. She is brave to recall this story; smart to address it, so that this world renowned secret can be uncovered and maybe tackled as a real problem for many families; and amazing to survive and then tell it to us later. Her story surely helped her deal with her past, and thus it will probably help others learn about abuse in families, and help others who may or may not have experienced similar situations in their lives as well.

I thoroughly recommend this book which charts the childhood of its author Andrea Ashworth. Although a memoir, the style is almost fictional, vivid, funny and moving. When Andrea is five, her father drowns. Two stepfathers reveal themselves to be capable of immense selfishness and great cruelty. However Once in a House on Fire is not simply the story of a poor and violent childhood. Brilliantly written, its warmth and humour conjure up the colours, tastes and smells of what it was like to grow up in the seventies in the north of England (with a brief stint in Canada). Andrea narrates from the perspective of the ages she writes about, spanning five to eighteen. Blessed with imagination and a love of books, stories were her escape, metaphorically and in the end, literally.