I stumbled across this book whilst I was being dragged around a garden centre by my other half - it was £2 and I can't resist a bargain. The review on the front, written by one of my favourite authors, stated that it was "bollocks brilliant".
Unfortunately when I recommended it to Book Club that review didn't seem to cut the mustard and my fellow readers were not keen, so it got pushed to one side. At the next meeting whilst we were discussing what to read I wheeled it out again, we had just been discussing how we wanted to embrace different genres and this book certainly was like nothing we had read before. And I already had the book so I was keen to read it rather than buy something new, or trot off to the library.
The book follows the unlikely friendship between Stuart, a homeless drug addict, and Alexandra, a stuffy Cambridge academic. The book is really interesting, however it is annoyingly written (following the advice of Stuart!), telling the story of his life in reverse. This doesn't sound that bad, but Masters' writing style isn't great and the book seems to jump around at times, and is also full of odd little drawings that add nothing to the book itself.
I found myself feeling really sorry for Stuart at times, and at other times thinking he was a horrible excuse for a human being, and certainly didn't like Alexander - I found him patronising and homourless. I also found their relationship difficult to understand as they clearly don't like each other - so I guess I thought of him as a bit if an annoying do-gooder.
Stuart's story is a tragic one - the history of his family is interesting and horrific at the same time, and half way through the book we learn of events in his past which have probably led to how he is in adulthood, but Masters just glosses over these in favour of far less interesting stories. However, there are some very funny bits in the book - I loved the newspaper clipping telling of Stuart and his friend's botched robbery attempt, which says how his friend went off the rails after a brief spell of fame following a Guinness World Record with bubble gum blowing.
The ending is annoying - I thought suicide was predictable, however we don't actually know whether he was hit by a train on purpose or not - this caused much discussion at Book Club as we all had different theories on what had happened.
Overall it is an odd book - really interesting and a good read but I definitely wouldn't read it again and I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone (although Book Club didn't hate it as I feared!).
3/5
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