After several torturous years of childhood bullying, maltreatment and chronic misunderstanding from both adults and his peers, he was sent to a school for children with emotional difficulties. The author seems to think that hearing about his life, which was neither unusual or particularly terrible, will save people but I think quite the opposite. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. As someone whose mental health is always up and down I really felt the line, “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep floating, before I drown.

However, I'm glad the author has spoken about something that clearly has affected his life in a very negative way, and I hope it has given him the peace he needs from the experience. I hope that he’s managed to get the help he needs and can continue being his authentic self with his family, who sound lovely.He says that he was abused (which I cannot say if this is true or untrue) but then exposes and exploits his children online. When you find yourself living in a world that doesn't understand you, and you lack any connection to anyone or any place, you are faced with few options. On finishing school, he floated from one career path to the next, eventually landing at university to study multimedia.

Having an imagination and daydreaming of course can be fine but I'm not sure I can agree with encouraging people to enter a fictional world which you rely on, to get by, day to day.The narrator voice seemed to jump with no rhyme or reason and it was hard to know when in time things were. He shows the beautiful world he retreated to time and time again when life was unbearable for his ‘skin machine’. He talks about what seems like a fairly normal life growing up in the 80s, but seems to view it as abusive and poverty stricken. And as Jonathan says at the start of the book, if you don't relate to it, then you're one of the lucky ones. Having said that however, I feel my review needs to reflect that this book is said to be childhood memoir, and I feel it reads very much as a fictional novel.