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SHE LEFT ME THE GUN by Emma Brockes Guardian journalist Emma Brockes' mother would tell her hazy stories of growing up in South Africa – whimsical tales of giant hailstones, the scrubby veldt and deadly snakes interspersed with hints of something considerably more sinister. “One day I will tell you the story of my life, and you will be amazed,” Paula told her daughter. She was an only child, whose own mother died when she was two. Her father remarried and went on to have seven more children, who Paula helped to raise. Violence was implied. There was a court case. And then Paula left the country. She arrived in England with a beautiful gun inlaid with pearl, and the rest was a shadowy blur. When Brockes’ mother dies she sets to investigating the darker secrets of her family history, and what follows is is an exacting memoir, brutally honest and told with a wit and lucidity that counters the grim reality of her mother's past. MORE >