An interesting novel about the life of someone from Guyana, I have never read from a Guyanese author so that was unique. I think this book will appeal to a lot of people who enjoy history told in a personal way.

Go to IG: @entre.mi.libro.y.yo to read the full review

First, I want to thank the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for gifting me this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

I don't really know what to think about this book. To be simple, this was not what I had in mind when I read the synopsis. Honestly, nothing really happens all through the book and sometimes it was even a little boring.

I think that the author had many privileges that she doesn't acknowledge and the story didn't really feel moving or teaching.

I did enjoy part of it though, it wasn't terrible at all, only just a little bit boring.

This book tended to repeat itself quite a lot, and was a little tedious. It just didn't engage me like I hoped.

I learned some interesting things about the former British Guyana from the early pages of this book, but I just did not enjoy it. This was largely due to the tone of the book and the narrator. The book is set almost entirely before Ms. Maas (who I now know is a novelist, though that is only very briefly mentioned in the book) even entered her teens, and the entire book has a juvenile quality to it, focusing heavily on her desire to ride ponies and emulate the children in her adventure books. As a result, this book reads almost like a rather boring adventure book written for children under 10 or like a grandmother telling stories of her childhood to her young grandchildren. The narrator makes this infinitely worse by using a tone that reminded me of an adult reading a book to very young children. After 10 hours of this, I couldn’t wait for it to end.

Sharon Maas has clearly had a remarkable life and childhood, especially growing up with parents who were so active in British Guyana’s political sphere at a tipping point in modern Guyana’s history. However, the way this story was told just did not engage me at all. Another audience may feel very differently.

The Girl From Lamaha Street is out now.

Thanks to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC!

The Girl From Lamaha Street details a childhood in colonial British Guyana. The author illustrates how other family members stepped in to fill the 'mother-shaped-void' in her early years. A heartfelt and poignant memoir.

"The Girl from Lamaha Street" by Sharon Maas is an autobiography that covers the early life and adolescent years of the author as she moves from British Guiana to a boarding school in England. Written with evocative detail and a clear love of her childhood Maas writes from a perspective I haven't seen before.

I was most interested in the authors early years - British Guiana being my Grandmother's homeland - and the bright descriptions of family and childhood make me want to book a flight straight away!

Moving to England to attend boarding school was the less interesting part of the book to me. Although the author's skin marked her as "odd" she otherwise enjoyed a regular boarding school life - albeit one with a Foster family - a subject that didn't really interest me even if it was filled with amusing anecdotes.

The audio version is supurbly narrated by Donna Berlin who I know nothing about but sounds remarkably like my Guyanese auntie. There were a couple of slightly confusing parts to the narration - "Carol vs Cs-role" took me a monet - but on the whole made for easy listening.

Thank you NetGalley for my ARC.

An intriguing coming of age memoir. But it got very boring in its narration and was on on surface level.

i wanted to like it, i really did. if it wasn’t a netgalley copy it would have been a DNF for me.

there was no support for the thesis… the claims the author makes throughout the book, even at the end, do not align to what she describes throughout the novel. i kept returning to the description of the book because what i thought it was going to be about, is not what it was about.

and ultimately, i felt very bored by this memoir. it did not strike me in any meaningful way and i am walking away without feeling anything as a result of reading it.

thank you @netgalley and @threadbooks for the review copy!

In <i>The Girl From Lamaha Street</i>, Sharon Maas recounts her childhood in British Guiana and later attending boarding school in England. She lives with her grandma, as her dad is campaigning for the country’s independence, and her mother often travels for work. Books take Sharon away into stories set in England, so different from her own home. Sharon dreams of horses and boarding school and eventually convinces her mother to send her to England to live like the children in her books. Will Sharon find a place to belong in England, or will she realize British Guiana is her true home after all?

I enjoyed getting to know more about Guyana in the 1950s and 1960s through this book, and I was impressed by the author’s ability to remember events from her childhood. Donna Berlin did a wonderful job narrating the book. It was interesting to learn about Sharon’s childhood, and the contrasting worlds of Guiana and an English boarding school, but I didn't feel a cohesive thread in the story of why I should read <i>this</i> book. I really would have loved to know more about what her mother did, but the author probably wouldn’t have enough memories of her mom’s work to write about that.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

I listened to The Girl From Lamar Street over a two day period whilst sunbathing on holiday. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this memoir. It allowed me develop an understanding of the societal norms in 50s British Guiana. This left me with some shame, reading of white privilege. Born to a mother highly involved in women's rights and large extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles, Sharon was never bored. The memoir takes us from British Guiana to Britain and Austria.
As a new convert to audio books I found this edition very easy to listen to and won't hesitate to listen to more by Sharon Mass.

The Girl from Lamaha Street : A Guyanese Girl at a 1960s English Boarding School and her search for Belonging

By- Sharon Maas

Publication date 4/07/22

4/5 stars

This charming coming of age memoir that follows the life a Guyanese girl as she grows up in Guyana and England. This book provided some interesting historical information on Guyana, that I had no knowledge of and captivated my attention throughout the story.

I enjoyed listening to the audiobook and highly recommend this book! Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture Audio for an advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I love memoirs, and this book really hit the spot for me.

The audiobook narration is perfect, I really enjoyed the rise and flow of the storytelling. It felt like listening to a woman in my family telling me about her young life. The book is written in a full circle way, starting at the beginning of Maas' life and ending at the natural end to her childhood when she moves back home. The stories are written with such vivid imagery that I truly felt like I was experiencing these things along with her.

The boarding school experience has always fascinated me, so getting this look into what Maas' experience was in an English boarding school was really interesting to me. There was just enough explanation of what the schools and dorms were like without being tedious. The book is a good mix of information, emotion, and narration of her life as she remembers it.

This is definitely a great story, and the audiobook enhances it so much. I absolutely recommend this to any and all memoir lovers.

I am a huge fan of memoirs and have read many. Unfortunately, this one did not pull me in as much as I would have liked. Although I appreciated learning a lot about British Guyana, a country I had no previous knowledge of the overall story was not very compelling. The life of the author does not seem all that different than many young girls growing up in the 1950s. This was an audiobook listen and I did enjoy the authors melodious narration.

Thank you to Netgalley for this advanced reader audio in return for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to listen to this audio book in return for an honest review.
Synopsis
One thing stood out in all the books I read. These children were all white. They had blue eyes and soft straight hair. Not a single child in a story was brown like me. How could that be right?"


Growing up in British Guiana in the 1950s, Sharon Maas has everything a shy child with a vivid imagination could wish for. She spends her days studying bugs in the backyard of her family home on Lamaha Street, eating fresh mangoes straight from the tree and losing herself in books tucked up on her granny’s lap, surrounded by her uncles and aunts.


But Sharon feels alone in a house full of adults. Her parents are divorced and her father is busy campaigning for British Guiana’s independence. With her mother often away for work, there’s a void in Sharon’s heart, and she craves rules and structure. The books she devours give her a glimpse of life in a faraway country: England. And although none of the characters in the books she reads look like her, her insatiable curiosity eventually leads Sharon to beg to be sent to boarding school, just like her literary heroes.


Reality comes as a shock. Being the only dark-skinned girl in a sea of posh white girls is a stark contrast to life in her warm homeland, where white people are a small minority. Sharon thrives in her new life. She does well academically, and horse-riding brings her self-discipline and joy in equal measure. But something is not quite right. Writing weekly letters to her mother, she begins to doubt whether this cold country is the right place for her. Is England really her home, and is this where she truly belongs?


You will be swept off your feet by the unputdownable story of Sharon Maas’ extraordinary childhood in British Guiana and England, a beautiful and inspiring tale of self-discovery, determination and chasing your dreams.

Memoirs obviously are a very personal thing, and this one definitely was very personal, heartfelt and insightful. Sharon Maas’ character shone through. I learned a lot on subjects I obviously haven’t ever had to experience. The description of times places and people were so clear I could easily conjoint their images. A really beautiful book.

<b>Read Around the World: Guyana</b>

This was an excellent read that I enjoyed very much. The author has an easy writing style and her voice is engaging and intriguing [I will admit that I'd love to visit Guyana now] and the story was so good that I was completely enthralled from beginning to end. I loved learning about her family and life in Guyana, but the part that really intrigued me was when she left all she knew at age 10 to move to England to go to boarding school. I remember having to move from one state to another and starting a new school at 10, but I CANNOT even imagine moving that far, away from family and all that the author knew, to go to school. I admire her so much for wanting to do this and I truly admire her mother for making it happen [even though the author isn't aware of the huge sacrifice it was until many years later]. Overall, it made for some compelling reading and a story that I am grateful I read.

I have had the privilege of listening to Donna Berlin narrate before and I was really excited to see that she narrated this book. I was not disappointed. Her narration was just so on point and she really made the story come alive and really added to the whole experience. I am so grateful I got to have an audiobook for this excellent memoir.

Thank you to NetGalley, Sharon Maas, Thread Books, Thread Books/Bookouture Audio for providing the ARC and audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

this was a delightful book, an account of a girl growing up with divorced parents and a dream to goo to boarding school and ride horses. The story is a memoir of a girl born in British Guiana and during her school years during the 60's. Lots of historical facts, politics, geography, fashion and the beatles helped to create the backdrop surrounding this little girls life. The main them is about family, parents who spilt up and the extended family who fill the gaps and the gap that is left. That gap becomes a yearning for a different life, reinventing herself all the time the yearning is fulfilled and although i felt the girl a little spoilt, as i go through the time line I could see this was a real memoir and found i really liked the author and understood a bit more about her start to life. Beautifully narrated, thank you #NetGalley for the audiobook to review.

I really loved this memoir from Sharon Maas, which was all about her childhood and beyond, all of which was really fascinating to read about. She was born in British Guyana and brought up by her parents and her family members. Her mother became distant and this was traumatic for her, but she still found a lot of love and care all around her, even though she always missed her. I enjoyed reading about her adventures through life, especially that with horses, the outdoors and all of nature. The audiobook narrator was perfect and did a fantastic job. This is a great read, which I highly recommend.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.