The Last Days: A memoir of faith, desire and freedom

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If anyone can understand where the author is coming from, it's me - I also grew up as a JW, finally leaving in my late teens. A lot of the things detailed are absolutely true; JWs do not celebrate birthdays or Christmas, you are encouraged to keep away from 'worldly people', women are definitely considered second class but it's wrapped up in the language of being a "complement" to man, & having a career/going to university is a no-no.. From my early teens I chafed against the expectations & I had questions about the teachings I was not allowed to ask, & upon leaving I felt exactly like Nicole Kidman looks in that photograph of her shortly after divorcing Tom Cruise - freedom. I found it hard, too, fully to sympathise with her inability, as an adult, to leave the sect. In her family, only her mother and sister are Witnesses – her mother, who bounces from one bad relationship to another, uses the church to salve her emotional disappointments and has a tendency to “sin” herself when the mood takes her – and Millar has friends and allies in her grandparents. She also wins a place at university in Edinburgh, in itself an escape of sorts. What is it that keeps her in the faith? What does she think is going to happen? A true tale with names changed of girl Ali now a Lady who grew up with a Mum a sister and the JW's, I'm guessing not many of them will read this but we'll I will let you make your mind up. There is a truth with an honesty rarely seen in these sort of accounts our Heroine Ali makes no secret of her faults or are they her human nature. When searching for something you look everywhere if your honest and this feels very honest. I'm a Christian not a JW I hate religion and the way it destroyed lives. To love is divin

I am not harassed to participate, visitors talk to me, no talks to me about religious matters at all. They are wrong about that. Because by now Millar has found within herself some talent they can’t take away. Something she can use to explain why she has broken away from the faith that sustained her mother through her own hard adult life bringing up two daughters on supplementary benefit, even though the cost of doing so is being disfellowshipped – ignored, cut off, shunned – by her mother as well as by all other Witnesses. She can come through the looking glass of organised religion and write a memoir as good, and as consistently gripping, as this. Ali Millar’s The Last Days (Ebury Press) is a coming-of-age memoirset within and without the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is written in three sections or, more biblically, three ‘books’, entitled Genesis, Exodus and Revelations, largely aligning with the themes of its subtitle, ‘faith, desire and freedom’. It is a book about surviving in and emerging from the shadows of organised religion, the apocalypse, other people’s dogma and angst, the weight of the past and fear of the future. While damning in terms of the particular organisation involved, The Last Days is no atheistic treatise. It is much better than that. It is a testament to resilience of spirit and a sympathetic treatment of vulnerability and folly. It is a cautionary tale showing where fear, judgement and the longing for certainty can lead, namely to the justifying of the unjustifiable and a negation of life. It is an indictment of fanatics and cynics who prey on the lost. It is also a book that marks the emergence of a major writer. A true tale with names changed of girl Ali now a Lady who grew up with a Mum a sister and the JW's, I'm guessing not many of them will read this but we'll I will let you make your mind up. There is a truth with an honesty rarely seen in these sort of accounts our Heroine Ali makes no secret of her faults or are they her human nature. When searching for something you look everywhere if your honest and this feels very honest. I'm a Christian not a JW I hate religion and the way it destroyed lives. To love is divine fear of Man is not.

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A biography of murderer turned Church of Scotland minster James Nelson, The Minister and the Murderer is not only about Nelson’s reinvention but the power that books have. As it unfolds, a doubling occurs; Nelson eludes Kelly, Kelly searches for the God he abandoned in favour of atheism. It’s a book that shows the complexity of fresh starts, and asks if they’re even possible in the wake of a terrible crime. And in the case of Kelly, is his return to God a beginning or a repetition? Written with such powerful emotion, you can feel the fear and bewildering thoughts of the young Ali. How it was drummed into her, how she felt helpless like her life was chosen for her, without having a chance of how she may have wanted her life direction to go.

I could have carried on reading it for days and am a little cross that it was so good I raced through it! I’d recommend this book to many to assist and support them in the healing process of leaving JW organisation if that is what they have decided to do. May Ali’s experiences resonate with others and assist in setting them free from a very unloving organisation.As an ex-Witness I found this book about being a Jehovah’s Witness, and then leaving, incredibly moving. I sometimes think books like this can’t be fully appreciated by anyone else other than ex-Witnesses, seeing as it’s such a peculiarly cultural thing.

A religious upbringing written from a child’s into adults point of view. A most compelling read, and I am certain this book will stay with me, and be remembered. One of the main things I appreciate (however much I wish it wasn’t the truth) is how the denouement isn’t an easy ‘wrapped in a bow’ ending; Millar could have offered up easy platitudes, but she doesn’t turn away from the devastating loss that comes with her autonomy. The end of Millar’s faith comes in a truly appalling scene in which three elders (all men, naturally, as Jehovah seems to regard women as second-rate) quiz her about her premarital sex life. On a scale of one to five, she is asked, how much pleasure did she get from heavy petting and what did it consist of? Somehow the fact that this is in her own Edinburgh living room – or in the 21st century come to that – makes it seem even more grotesque. Believe me, it gets even worse. Yet still Millar wants to stay loyal to her faith and to make her marriage work. ‘[Actually,’ one of the elders says, ‘it’s up to your husband to decide what happens next. It’s not your decision to make.’But my experiences aren’t relevant here, Ali Millars’s are and she writes them so beautifully. It is incredible how she manages to capture the spirit of whatever age she is and imbue that into those chapters so that you’d be forgiven for thinking that she was copying from a childhood log book. Her growing maturity matches the maturity of the storytelling until by the end it is elegiac and fully grown. Published tomorrow by Ebury, July Book of the Month is Ali Millar’s ‘The Last Days’, a memoir about growing up in, and then escaping, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is a dam-burst of a book, writes Darran Anderson, which marks the emergence of a major writer. A nearly impossible new start … Vanessa Redgrave in the National Theatre adaptation of The Year Of Magical Thinking. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian