Books like Bad blood by Lorna Sage

Lorna Sage’s memoir offers an intimate examination of her childhood in provincial Britain after World War II. Her early years are shaped by a brilliant yet bitter grandfather—an exiled vicar and womanizer—whose presence in a remote Welsh border village sets the tone for family drama. The gradual erosion of that old world mirrors her grandparents’ faltering marriage. Sage’s father returns from the army, and the family moves into a newly built house where secrets and myths about their social standing emerge. She observes her mother’s unfulfilled ambitions and her father’s devotion to work, leading her to vow she would never marry or have children—a promise that she soon finds she has already outgrown. The narrative remains a vivid portrait of 20th‑century Welsh social life, the weight of family expectations, and the bittersweet path toward self‑discovery.

First publish date: 2000