It takes the average reader 6 hours and 53 minutes to read Waters Under the Bridge by Isobelle and David 'Khyber' Close
Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more
David Close’s English mother Isobelle Harwood never knew her mother, who died from TB just after childbirth and his Irish father Jack Close never knew his father, who was jailed for bigamy. To the Irish, ‘close’ means ‘near-enough’ while Jack always was, legally speaking, a bastard. These sociological factors shaped their working-class family struggles before, during and after World War Two in England and reappear as ‘family karma’ down the generations of this now-scattered clan. His mother’s childhood memories of orphanage life in the 1920s were followed by years of domestic servitude in the houses of her rich or unscrupulous ‘betters’ until she trained as a nurse during the war. She calls this story ‘Finding Myself’, which is part 1 of this book. Isobelle saw a photograph of and became pen-pals with an Irish nurses’ brother called Jack, a sailor on Atlantic convoy duties who she married on Victory in Europe Day in May 1945. David was born in June the following year. The second section ‘Knowing Myself’ reveals their married life until Isobelle’s battle with life-threatening TB when she was thirty years old in 1953. On recovery, her doctors claimed that if she lived in a dry climate and had no more children she would have a life-expectancy of ten more years. However, she produced two more offspring and managed to ride for an hour on a camel in China at the age of seventy-six. Part 3 contains David’s childhood memories of England, Ireland and in 1961 the first ten years of family life in Oz. Some of his father Jack’s wartime exploits and then his untimely death in 1982 lead the reader into the last section titled Release Retrospectives containing his mother’s mature reflections on grief, life and the all and everything, as well as her Back to Britain and Silk Road Diaries. Her son David’s lifelong troubled relationship with his father is explored in his other autobiographical works, but his two chapters titled ‘Close encounters of the personal secret kind’ and ‘Conflicts and growth amidst grief’ explore three of the Close family’s personal experiences of communications from beyond the grave – pointing towards reincarnation being cosmic reality central to any ‘Divine Plan’ and the healing answer to why we are here…
Waters Under the Bridge by Isobelle and David 'Khyber' Close is 399 pages long, and a total of 103,341 words.
This makes it 135% the length of the average book. It also has 126% more words than the average book.
The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 9 hours and 24 minutes to read Waters Under the Bridge aloud.
Waters Under the Bridge is suitable for students ages 12 and up.
Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.
When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.
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