Skint Estate: A memoir of poverty, motherhood and survival

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The only only reason I gave it four stars was because the structure of the book was at times, just really confusing. She sees almost too clearly to bear how circumscribed her life is, just as her father’s was before her.

It is a role that is much closer to tragedy than comedy – which is not to say it is without laughs, black though they are. Gabriel Gbadamosi’s Regeneration takes a more lyrical approach to the scars left by early horrors, dipping in and out of poetry, patois, prose and different periods of time, to no less powerful effect. Before that, Davies lived in a caravan and in the back of a yellow Iveco van and in a tent outside a backpackers’ hostel, where she worked as a waitress.The house was let by owners who were travelling the world on the combined income of those living in it. Författaren berättar rakt uppochner om sakernas tillstånd utan att vara sentimental eller självömkande. There are definitely some bad choices described – like going back with the man who has previously been imprisoned for assaulting her; or deleting her affectionate message to (and all contact details of) the only man revealed in these pages to have treated her decently. Told with a dark lick of humour and two-fingers up to the establishment, Cash takes us on her isolated journey from council house childhood to single motherhood, working multiple jobs yet relying on food banks and temporary accommodation, all while skewering stereotypes of what it means to be working class.

The darkly funny debut memoir from the creator of HBO and BBC's Rain Dogs, Skint Estate is a scream against austerity that rises full of rage in a landscape of sink estates, police cells, refuges and peepshows. Cash Carraway's unique voice, filled in equal measure with rage and inspiration, tells a story of hope amongst state violence. Most are given jobs on the minimum wage which offers no add on top ups, rent goes up, utility bills increase and the public spendature is cut. It is also a reminder that poverty in this country is not confined to one place: there are windowless bedsits with both town mice and country mice.Along the way she makes a compelling argument for the urgent subject that remains stubbornly absent from Westminster politics: land reform, a fair tax on property and ancient estates, like that on which her shed stands. As a single mother, she is driven by her instinct to provide for her child - from dancing in a Soho strip club while heavily pregnant, to penning articles about life below the poverty line which get twisted to support the media's ongoing narrative about benefit scroungers. We at Penguin Random House Australia acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians and the first storytellers of the lands on which we live and work. She isn’t above selling stories about her wretched daily grind of budgeting to a trashy supermarket magazine. As the episodes unfold, Costello and Iris end up skidding and reeling through various scenarios (entering a women’s refuge; cos-playing yummy mummydom; socially cleansed from London).

This week’s participants in a deliberately lo-fi, rambling conversation are Jessica Hynes, Emmanuel Sonubi, Amy Gledhill and Patrick Kielty.

Cash Carraway, author of Skint Estate, also dreams at one point of finding just a shed for herself and her young daughter. She’s a single mother, raising a child in a city she loves, with no support network and a history of domestic abuse. The reality of not having a fixed address and how that affects your ability to work, have a bank account, etc.

Following her striking 2019 memoir, Skint Estate, Cash Carraway has created this eight-part drama – and the result is authentic, original and well worth tuning in to. Her story begins in 2010 when she found herself pregnant and alone in a women’s refuge shouting at David Cameron on the TV talking about fairness. She then lived in 43 different places between 16 and 29, “hopping from bed to bed, from trauma to trouble”.While seeming at first to be about knotty family bonds, Dreamland soon becomes about secrets, the most damaging of which is nursed by – wouldn’t you know it? There isn’t anything she does not want to share from “my tragic and dirty little life” from her vagina size (small) to her suicide (unsuccessful).