Girl on the Wrong Side of Forty

A candid memoir of addiction, recovery and the long journey from blaming the past to taking ownership of the life that followed.

Growing up in the 1970s in a large family, Anne Bianco experienced a constant feeling that she was different to others. Her love of the arts and drama marked her out as different from her classmates and her dream was to flee the family home and become a Broadway star. Throughout her childhood and adolescence her relationship with her mother was distant - Anne felt starved of maternal affection and found her mother cold and seemingly frustrated and disappointed in her. To escape this pain and lack of understanding she found ‘warmth’ and ‘acceptance’ in alcohol - a relationship that continues until ultimately she finds herself in rehab and is asked to explain to the group why she is there.

This is a memoir that is more than a search for belonging and a journey through alcohol addiction and recovery - it is about how far, and how long, we can ‘blame’ others for our adult behaviour and as she looks back over her life, including the untimely deaths of two siblings and her complex mother-daughter relationship Anne begins to reappraise everything...