Regarding West: the synopsis of this paperback is misleading and our review must necessarily include the information that our sister, Jac (Jacquetta), was not the author’s ‘wife’: indeed she planned to leave him.

‘Writers will write’ — he has said elsewhere — yet to claim as truth that which can be proved to be untrue, is not so much a writer’s stratagem as, we believe, a questionable practice. His style aside there are many considerable inaccuracies in West.

Amongst others, Jim Perrin does not come from the Welsh family background he claims in several passages, nor is he (fortunately for him) dying of ‘terminal lung cancer’ — pages 149 to 150, and 301 to 302 — and we feel that a review should, properly, point out these discrepancies when the book is claimed by its author to be autobiographical.

In our attempt to put the record straight — where our late sister is concerned — we have set up this site and we hope that ‘Waterstones:’ (in the interests of honesty and fair play) will allow us to invite readers of Jim Perrin’s book, West, to access it at: jacssisters.org.

But, they did not.

Jac’s sisters.

The book West has already been exhaustively reviewed and in many cases we believe, pseudonymously by the author himself.  It was not, despite expectation, long-listed for the ‘Wales Book of the Year’ and the author is neither of Welsh ancestry as he pretends, nor resident in Wales.  We understand, incidentally, that the sales so far have been very low.

Jim Perrin lies when he says that our sister — the main character in the book — was his ‘lover, wife and friend of forty years’ and his questionable account of their short time together is so full of provable falsehoods that in our opinion he should be ashamed to have written it.

Jac, our sister, who was weakened with cancer, intended to tell him to leave her house — there were many reasons for her disillusionment, culminating in the author’s assault on her son, and she was making her plans accordingly: sadly she died of her cancer and Jim Perrin quite shamelessly exploits that too in ‘West:’. Continue reading →