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

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It took me a little longer to read as I wanted to absorb it in all it’s detail. It’s an emotionally charged book, written with the most descriptive sentences. I like the style of her writing, her own unique way of bringing her memories to paper.

I could have carried on reading it for days and am a little cross that it was so good I raced through it! This is a lovely documentation of a woman discovering that the ideas she can grown up with could not and would not work for the life she longed to live while also contending with the loss of community and identity that would come with forging her own path. Millar's writing and rawness were a joy to read. No-one "shuns" me. No-one is required to. We all co-exist without any shunning, harrssment or mention of it.

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Ali Millar’s true story will stay with me and I do hope that she is able to somehow reconcile the broken relationships that she has had to endure by her leaving, especially that with her mother. These are relationships that are not broken because of Ali’s doing but because of the harsh rules the Jehovah’s Witness organisation imposes on members who leave. 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 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? Faith, desire, control, abuse of power… I devoured The Last Days, an incisive takedown of an exploitative, destructive organisation via a personal story.Additionally, as broadcast journalist she has interviewed numerous authors including Rachel Cusk, Amy Liptrot, Etgar Keret and Marina Warner. As event chair she has interviewed at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Camp Good Life and The Social. The end felt a bit rushed. I would have liked more detail on how she left the Witnesses. The corruption of the Witnesses is touched upon but again not enough detail. A blog, by the author, is also mentioned, but never named. She is trying to protect others identities so maybe Ali Millar is a pen name. As journalist, her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Stylist, The Sunday Times and Caught by the River. She has been profiled by The Sunday Times, The Sunday Post and appeared on the BBC World Service, NBC National Australia, Times Radio, and Talk TV. She will appear on a Channel 4 documentary with Rebekah Vardy, recently recorded in the winter of '22. She has read and appeared at festivals and events including Edinburgh International Book Festival, Wigtown Book Festival and Camp Good Life, as well as across digital platforms on podcast, blogs and Youtube channels.

Anorexia became a form of penance. She mortified her flesh until it turned a translucent blue – she felt “angelic”. Starvation made wings of her shoulder blades. At 16, she was hospitalised, but recovered and eventually returned to the faith (marrying and attempting to serve as a submissive wife and mother), before her epiphany in that lavatory. Wow. What a tremendous memoir. I’ll preface this review by saying my thoughts on JW as a religious organisation are not clear cut. I have friends who are JW and are really happy, my friend doesn’t appear oppressed by her husband and her children are bright, happy and just regular kids. As a CofE Christian myself there are a few things that my friends Kingdom Hall do that I really think we could learn from as our church slowly dwindles as it’s ageing population dies. BUT all that aside I have no doubt that Ali’s experience is genuine and that she and many hundreds or even thousands of other ex Witnesses have been traumatised by the very people and place that are supposed to provide you with comfort and safety. The fact that, like Mormonism the JW faith has been written and designed by ‘modern’ day white men in ivory towers in the USA is enough to make me suspicious of its true biblical purpose and reading how women are expected to be submissive to their parents, then church then husband it’s definitely something I couldn’t be a part of. Both my parents were convinced and lifelong Christian Scientists, another (let’s be kind) esoteric American religion. They didn’t believe in doctors, medicine, hospitals: all you had to do if you fell ill was to ‘know the truth’ – that because you were created in the image and likeness of God, and because God is perfect, you couldn’t possibly have cancer, a dodgy heart or whatever ailed you at the time. Every Wednesday evening, they held ‘testimony meetings’ which mainly consisted of members of the congregation standing up and recounting how they’d done just that. 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.’Robyn Drury, commissioning editor at Ebury Press, acquired world all languages rights from Matthew Marland at RCW. I couldn’t stop listening to Ali’s beautiful voice and her experiences of being exposed to JW Organisation from childhood to a young adult. So easy to listen to her story for a straight 8 or so hours. In this frightening, cloistered world Ali grows older. As she does, she starts to question the ways of the Witnesses, and their control over the most intimate aspects of her life. As she marries and has a daughter within the religion, she finds herself pulled deeper and deeper into its dark undertow, her mind tormented by one question: is it possible to escape the life you are born into? Ali is also deeply self-sabotaging. As a teen, she begins counting calories and restricts her eating as a means to exert some control over her own life - leading to anorexia. She drinks to excess, often finding it leads to oblivion or questionable behaviour, but regardless, she quaffs the alcohol down. Finally, although she scoffs at almost everything related to the religion, she takes the step of baptism into the faith which seems completely illogical.