Imagine your family is moving house and your mother deliberately leaves you behind. Or having a bed wet alarm strapped to
your bed for years and years even though it doesn't prevent you from wetting the bed every single night. And when the alarm goes off your mother strips the bed and leaves you cold and wet on a bare mattress. Or she bags your wet sheets and puts them back on the bed the following night so that you can sleep in your own urine.
This book deals with domestic cruelty and how it feels being unloved by your own. It’s heartbreaking.
Ugly is a story told in 1. person about a little black
girl's horrible upbringing. It is a true story which makes the read even more horrid. The girl telling the story is unloved and very lonely. It has two reasons. One: she wets the bed and two: she is smarter than the rest of the large family. When she comes home from
school with her school pictures the mother laughs in her face when she asks for money to buy the pictures with. Does she really think her mother would like to have a picture of someone that ugly?
It is the classic tale of the ugly duckling, the one that doesn't fit in but with age becomes the most beautiful of them all. It is a story of determination and strength.
Constance, which is the little girl's name, is good in school. She takes on a job at a very young age so that she can provide for herself and she manages with hard work to go to law school with out any help. She is a survivor.
The book satisfies basic human curiosity and attraction towards cruelty. We like to read about what goes on behind closed doors. If you like tabloids, scandal etc. you will definitely love this book.
It would have been nice to hear the mother's version of the story cause frankly it seems to cruel to be true. But unfortunately because it is written in the 1. person it is solely Constance’s point of vies we get.
If you are curious and want to know more about her life she has recently written a follow-up novel called Beyond Ugly.