Damian Barr

I couldn't figure out what his book was about. There are two entirely separate stories which the author seems to imply are connected, but apart from a couple of coincidences I couldn't see much connection.

The first section is somewhat awkwardly written. It's a letter from a wife to her husband, but includes sentences like this one when describing the mulberry tree the grows next the their family home, "Now its branches hold our home and its big heart-shaped leaves give us shade." That's a comically odd thing to write to your husband who left two weeks ago. Gradually it becomes clear that the letter is a diary, but as long as it's written in the second person, addressing the absent husband, the tone is confusing. The rest of that section is just an account of misery, not particularly vivid nor with any great sense of redemption, hope or insight.

The middle of the book connects the first story with the second, at least temporally. Once again I couldn't really find any unifying theme or emotional, social or spiritual lesson. The characters are not particularly engaging - they struggle through life without particularly learning or growing.

The final story is the most powerful and coherent - if I had to guess I would say this was written and then the rest was constructed around it to flesh it out into a novel. However, I'm not sure it justifies the brutality and misery it exposes the reader to. There needs to be something higher - humour, hope, meaning, redemption, insight - to make it worthwhile reading about someone's abject misery. This story didn't offer that.

And, well, race. Apart from the final story, every character's "struggle" is cast in stark relief by their maids (and other black workers, but particularly the maids). I just can't get too upset about a character who is too sad to lift their feet for the maid's vacuum cleaner. The black characters are not just servants, but second class citizens, with no chance for better employment in a system designed to dehumanise them. That was a huge obstacle to making the characters relatable.

The prose is fairly flat - neither elegant nor lyrical - and the characters are also pretty dull, on the whole.… (meer)

It's hard to summarize this memoir of a gay boy who growis up in a brutal, abusive, proverty stricken-- & deindustrializing at Maggie's beheast-- environment in Glasgow, so I will just copy some of the jacket blurbs "A brilliant laugh-out-loud and profoundly moving eighties memoir" "a work of stealthy genius". For sure. It is an often dark story told equally often with brilliant humour which I guess is how one survives.
Beautifully written in plain but evocative language. It contains so many things to think about and discuss that I wish I belonged to a book club.… (meer)