Review: But We All Shine On - The Remarkable Orphans of Burbank Children's Home

But We All Shine On is the long-awaited sequel to Paolo Hewitt's memoir of a childhood spent in care The Looked After Kid - still best in its class after a decade and well worth reading alongside this new slim volume, which follows the lives of other children Paolo shared his time with in Burbank.

The three vignettes are powerful recollections gathered from interviews between Paolo and his former care siblings with common themes of rejection, powerlessness, bewilderment and rebellion. The remarkable aspect about all of the stories is the element of triumph over adversity. We meet Terry, who finds God in prison to overcome his overwhelming rage and relinquish criminality; and Des, who survived his childhood in care by assuming the alter ego of a happy-go-lucky individual who just got on with things. His life is then devastated by an affair, leading him to breakdown and subsequent healing through therapy as an adult and later finding the true love of his life. Then there's Norman, who nobody listened to, an invisible boy who couldn't stop running.

This is no sentimental journey. Hewitt's humorous approach ensures the reader remains captivated, and the stories of the three subjects utterly respected. The author's compassion, admiration and respect for his journalistic subjects shines through to give each one their own voice. There is no judgment of those who fell prey on their journey to serious criminality, drug use or mental breakdown. The reader is invited to reflect on the damage done to children reliant on the care system by emotionless or brutal carers, by the failure of the system to inform those it looks after what is happening to them, by change and rejection, often handed out just when a child has settled in a home, and by the devastating realisation that you are absolutely alone in the world.

While the extremes of cruelty dealt by carers burdened with their own problems and acting these out through the children they "care" for, and the large rambling children's homes in which herds of children ran wild, are hopefully a thing of the past, the emotions and the causation of those feelings of abandonment, helplessness and difference are those expressed by care leavers and children in care today. There may be something of inevitability to this given the circumstances that make it necessary for children to become "looked after". But readers should take note that the world described in the book in which the system not only fails to alleviate initial trauma but often reinforces it, is one still inhabited my many "looked-after kids".

The book will be enjoyed by care leavers of all ages - hopefully the younger will find hope and reassurance in it, the older a sense of journeys shared and brotherhood. For professional readers, if you are not moved and humbled by this, it may be time to look for another job.

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