Learning to Think.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

When you have nothing, you cling to whatever gives you hope.

Put yourself in Tracy King's shoes. Growing up in an ordinary council estate outside Birmingham; a house filled with creativity, curiosity and love, but marked by her father's alcoholism and her mother's agoraphobia.

By the time she turns twelve her father has been killed, her sister taken into care and her mother ensnared by the promises of born-again Christianity.

This isn't the stuff of cult documentaries; this is the story of an ordinary family trapped in a broken system. It's a story that could happen to anyone without the tools to transform their circumstances. And it's the story of how Tracy found her way out.

A shocking, inspiring and ultimately hopeful memoir that holds up a mirror to the everyday realities of living in poverty, it is also a testament to the power of books and to learning to question our world.
'Tracy King's memoir is heartbreaking and hopeful...An incredible true story of survival and forgiveness.' TIM MINCHIN

'Raw and unflinching.' CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ

'A brilliant writer.' ADAM KAY

'What would you do if you began to suspect the events of your childhood didn't happen as you remembered them? In this evocative memoir, Tracy King confronts the stories we all tell ourselves in order to live.' HELEN LEWIS

©2024 Tracy King (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • An astonishing account of a father’s violent death, exorcism and religious superstition….
    Learning to Think is, in many ways, a book about demons: the addiction, violence, mental health struggles and, yes, superstition, that so often accompany poverty. But it’s also the story of an extraordinary family, full of energy and joie de vivre. It’s a story that brims with life and hard-won hope… Well structured and punchily told.

    Sunday Times

  • A memoir you read with the same breathlessness as you read the most gripping of novels … An account of a family both torn apart and trapped by a broken system. A story of poverty and hardship, religion and superstition, but also an incredibly hopeful tale of how King got out of it.

    i paper

  • An earth-shattering, hopeful memoir.

    Woman's Own

  • Reflective and compassionate, King gently reminds of the complex ways poverty wreaks havoc on people’s lives.

    Woman & Home

  • A powerful depiction of a challenged but enterprising, intelligent and resilient family.

    Times Literary Supplement

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