Leeds Book Club: Mental Health Challenge

Showing posts with label Mental Health Challenge. Show all posts

Sunday, 19 January 2014

Sharing Stories - Notes from an Exhibition - GUEST

I made this: Unknown at 11:49 pm 1 comments

Leeds Book Club has been participating in the Arts and Minds Network's 2013 project on raising awareness of mental health issues.

Now Fiona actually provided me with this MONTHS ago and it was lost in the wilderness that is my email inbox, languishing, wilting for lack of attention. I'm so glad that this review has finally found it's place in the sun as it's fantastic! Huge thanks to @MindFiona

NOTES FROM AN EXHIBITION

PATRICK GALE

BLURB (from Amazon)

From the author of A Perfectly Good Man, the bestselling story of an artist tormented by depression and the toll of creativity.

When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies she leaves behind an extraordinary body of work – but for her family there is a legacy of secrets and painful revelations.

Rachel exerts a power that outlives her. To her children she is both curse and blessing, as they cope with the inheritance of her passions – and demons. Only their father's gift of stillness can withstand Rachel’s destructive influence and the suspicion that they all came a poor second to her art.

Piecing together the clues of her life – as artist, lover, mother, wife and patient – takes the reader from Cornwall to Canada across a span of forty years. What emerges is a tender story of enduring love, and a portrait of a family coping with the sometimes too dazzling brilliance of a genius.

When I volunteered to review one of the Sharing Stories books I ended up picking one that I knew nothing about. As the subject matter was quite heavy, I might not normally have chosen to read it. So it was with some trepidation that I started reading ‘Notes from an Exhibition’.

I was expecting to struggle through the book, however I found couldn’t put it down.

The focus of the story is Rachel Kelly, an artist, her husband Anthony, and their children, Garfield, Morwenna, Heldley, and Petroc. Rachel suffers from bi-polar disorder and much of the story focuses on the tangle of her that, her art and family and the shifting pressures of them all. Though Rachel has the greatest share of the narrative, the story is seen from the perspective of all of the family members. Each chapter is prefaced with an ‘interpretation card’ from a posthumous exhibition of her works and items from her life -Hence, notes from an exhibition.

The book begins with Rachel at the end of her life and about to embark on a series of paintings we later learn are some of her greatest works. From there, the book follows the aftermath of her death for her husband and now grown-up children, whilst flashing back to significant points in all of their lives. I quite liked the structure. At first I found it a little disorientating but by the end appreciated the different perspectives.

They rounded out the characters and showed the differences between how they behaved and how they felt. I also felt it gave the book more of a sense of hope. All the ‘notes’ say who donated which item in the exhibition, and the fact that the donors were able and willing to contribute is promising.

The family isn't always a particularly likeable one; as individuals they are all flawed in some way, and all struggle to communicate with one another. Though Rachel undoubtedly loves her children,

‘art was the one thing that stilled and focused her impossibly restless personality; art won through where her family failed.’

Though art offers her respite, but it is occasionally her focus over everything else. She herself isn't sure of her motivation for coming off her medication whilst pregnant. It exposes her to a greater chance of post-partum depression but

‘the glorious ascent before the fall and the work she could achieve in climbing made it worthwhile. Perhaps.’

She can be quite cruel at times; the incident on Morwenna’s tenth birthday stands out. However it is counterbalanced by chapters told from Rachel’s perspective. Though she herself admits she isn't always kind (‘she ignored him, and used to it, poor sod, he went away’) these chapters gave me more of an insight to the fragility she feels.

One part that stood out for me was the account of a costume ball that Rachel attends with her friend/doctor Jack. She has finally been diagnosed, in part because of the support from Jack, and the (admittedly imperfect) sense of relief she feels really struck me

‘She was not mad. She had a chemical imbalance that was controllable.’

The book isn't an easy ride, but I found it was worth it. I felt it gave me more insight into the complexities of living with mental illness. Gale presents all of the character’s as complex individuals, complete with flaws and virtues. As ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ made me want to read more by Gale I would definitely recommend it to others.

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Chat with Peter Bullimore
Mental Health Reading Challenge
Blurbs for the books!

Podcast with Tom at Arts and Minds Leeds

The List

Feb: The Silver Linings Play Book - Matthew Quick

Mar: The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson

Apr: I had a black dog - Matthew Johnson

May: Why be happy when you can be normal - Jeanette Winterson

Jun: Poppy Shakespeare - Clare Allan

Jul: 01 - Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes

Jul: 02 - Ariel - Sylvia Plath

Aug: Tender is the Night - F Scott Fitzgerald

Sep: Day - A L Kennedy

Oct: Notes from an exhibition - Patrick Gale

Nov: A life too short - Ronald Reng

Dec: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

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Table of Contents - Guest Stars

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Full Table of Contents

Wednesday, 2 October 2013

Sharing Stories - Tender is the Night - GUEST

I made this: Unknown at 7:02 pm 0 comments

Leeds Book Club will be participating in the Arts and Minds Network's new project on raising awareness of mental health issues.

This cracking review is provided to us by regular book clubber, blogger and all round fabulous human being - @Becca_Lou18

TENDER IS THE NIGHT

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

BLURB (from Amazon)

In the wake of World War I, a community of expatriate American writers established itself in the salons and cafes of 1920s Paris. They congregated at Gertrude Stein's select soirees, drank too much, married none too wisely, and wrote volumes--about the war, about the Jazz Age, and often about each other. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were part of this gang of literary Young Turks, and it was while living in France that Fitzgerald began writing Tender Is the Night. Begun in 1925, the novel was not actually published until 1934. By then, Fitzgerald was back in the States and his marriage was on the rocks, destroyed by Zelda's mental illness and alcoholism. Despite the modernist mandate to keep authors and their creations strictly segregated, it's difficult not to look for parallels between Fitzgerald's private life and the lives of his characters, psychiatrist Dick Diver and his former patient turned wife, Nicole. Certainly the hospital in Switzerland where Zelda was committed in 1929 provided the inspiration for the clinic where Diver meets, treats, and then marries the wealthy Nicole Warren. And Fitzgerald drew both the European locale and many of the characters from places and people he knew from abroad.In the novel, Dick is eventually ruined--professionally, emotionally, and spiritually--by his union with Nicole. Fitzgerald's fate was not quite so novelistically neat: after Zelda was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and committed, Fitzgerald went to work as a Hollywood screenwriter in 1937 to pay her hospital bills. He died three years later - not melodramatically, like poor Jay Gatsby in his swimming pool, but prosaically, while eating a chocolate bar and reading a newspaper. Of all his novels,Tender Is the Night is arguably the one closest to his heart. As he himself wrote, "Gatsby was a tour de force, but this is a confession of faith."

The first time I tried to read Tender is the Night I gave up. I’d previously read The Great Gatsby and I loved Fitzgerald’s writing style but found the characters slightly lacking (perhaps this is intentional by Fitzgerald to reflect the glamorous but ultimately shallow society they embodied). Knowing that Tender is the Night has semi-autobiographical elements I had high hopes that it would have much more depth in its characters. Despite me desperately wanting to enjoy it, I struggled to make any progress. When LeedsBookClub mentioned that it was one of the books on the mental health reading list I asked if I could review it – possibly the motivation of reviewing the book would help me power through and get it read.

So it was with slightly mixed feelings that I picked up Tender is the Night for a second time (this time on Kindle) back in June (giving myself plenty of time in case it was a slog). This time I didn’t struggle quite so much. Although I vaguely recollected the main plot points, oddly it felt like reading the story from fresh and I was pleasantly surprised by how much easier I found it to get into.

Tender is the Night is centred on the relationship of Dick and Nicole Diver, a beautiful young couple who everyone wants to be around. We are first introduced to the Divers through Rosemary, a stunning young actress fresh from her first film who is visiting the French Riviera with her mother.

Straight away it is clear that anyone who is anyone wants to be friends with the Divers, who hold their court on the beach by day and by invitation to their villa by night. They are what make the Riviera a place worth being. Rosemary soon finds herself brought into the fold, becoming fast friends with Nicole and completely in love with Dick. Although the Divers’ lives appear perfect it is clear there are cracks in their relationship and one night at a party at the Divers’ villa, a guest witnesses an “incident” in the bathroom, suggesting that things aren’t quite how the Divers make out.

The book is split into three parts with the second part detailing the background of the Divers and how they met (there is also a version of the book with events in chronological order). We discover that Nicole, abused by her father, was admitted to a clinic in Switzerland as a teenager. There she meets Dick, a poor but talented psychiatrist visiting the clinic, and quickly forms an attachment.

Seeing this as an opportunity to assist her recovery, Nicole is encouraged to write letters to Dick after he leaves. When Dick eventually returns he realises that he has fallen in love with Nicole, becoming both her carer and husband. When Nicole’s father dies, she and her sister, Baby, inherit his fortune and it is this which allows the Divers to fund their lavish lifestyle. Despite their luxurious life on the Riviera, Dick is keen to return to his research and Nicole and Baby agree to fund setting up his own clinic. For a time all seems well with the family living at the clinic but it soon becomes apparent that Nicole’s mental health is deteriorating and Dick is drinking far more than he used to.

This comes to a head when Nicole attempts to crash the family’s car on the way back from a family outing. Dick’s business partner convinces him to take a sabbatical and he returns to America for his father’s funeral. On his return to Europe Dick crosses paths with Rosemary. Although she is now older and wiser, no longer holding Dick in the high regard she once did, they quickly start an affair.

Dick continues to spiral into alcoholism, resenting Nicole and her family for making him feel like a kept man. Nicole, no longer able to see Dick as anything other than her doctor is seduced by Tommy, part of the Riviera set, who has always had a thing for her. Eventually Nicole is faced with an ultimatum – her husband or her lover.

I felt that there was much more depth to the characters in this than in Gatsby. Fitzgerald very much focuses on the dynamic between Dick and Nicole. Their romance was born out of Nicole’s illness and at times she struggles to separate her husband and lover from her doctor and carer. Eventually this leads to the demise of their marriage as Nicole feels she no longer needs the support that Dick has always represented. Nicole is central to the story yet a complete enigma to the reader. We never really know her motivations, seeing her only through the eyes of others (namely Dick and Rosemary). Everyone treats her as fragile, not least her overbearing sister Baby (I imagine her as Katharine Hepburn-esque), who cannot accept that any man, let alone a poor doctor, could be good enough for her little sister. Nicole’s eventual decision between Dick and Tommy signifies how much she has grown as a person. It is not clear whether she has really recovered from her schizophrenia but her decision marks her own belief in herself and her ability to conduct a relationship that is not, in part, based on her mental frailty.

Dick could be viewed as a romantic hero who saves Nicole from a clinic, giving her the opportunity to love and live in the real world; or an unscrupulous doctor who marries his patient for her money then succumbs to alcoholism. To me, Dick is a little bit of both but on the whole I found myself rooting for him. I desperately wanted things to work out between him and Nicole (though I admit that I am a complete romantic) and I found that I resented Rosemary for the part she might have played in the disintegration of the Divers’ relationship. However, this is perhaps unfair on Rosemary whose affair with Dick, despite her best efforts, only really starts when his relationship with Nicole has already passed the point of no return. I think at times Fitzgerald’s characters are difficult to grasp and can be somewhat lost in his grandiose prose. Yet I found I felt far more strongly about these characters than in Gatsby. Dick and Nicole present themselves to the world as a perfect power couple and yet both are battling their demons but do so alone. Although Dick’s alcoholism appears very much polite to the modern reader (though possibly more shocking at the time of publication) it is clear that it alienates him from his former friends.

Despite being published in 1934 I felt that overall the writing had aged well and had a contemporary feel. There were some references that reflected its time – for example references to “negros” and Dick’s patients including a homosexual man (homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness in 1973). I found the prose beautifully descriptive, sometimes completely absorbing but at others it completely washed over me like a wave and I struggled to grasp the story. I found it easy to picture the setting of the French coastline and Swiss clinic. Fitzgerald is brilliant at capturing the essence of his settings and I found myself longing to visit the south of France. However, I found that I had to really concentrate at times to keep with the thread of the story and this made reading in busy places such as my train to work difficult. It’s not easy to pick the book straight back up – I often had to refresh where I was in order to get back into it.

It goes without saying that mental health features strongly in this book, with a good proportion of the story set in mental health clinics. This was a very different era of mental health. Psychology was still a reasonably new field. Nicole is said to be schizophrenic, brought on by the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Mental illness is complex and not well understood even now but I can’t help but wonder if modern doctors would view this as a cause of Nicole’s condition. In some cases Dick and his colleagues are simply exploiting the rich, treating their children but taking a dim view of whether there is actually anything wrong with them. Of all his patients, the one Dick takes a personal interest in is the “woman with the scabs” who is not just a rich kid but has a genuine illness.

This exploitation on the part of the clinics is probably a reflection of Fitzgerald’s own experiences with clinics through the treatment of his wife, Zelda. Fitzgerald often struggled to pay for his wife’s treatment, borrowing money from friends as well as writing short stories as a means of paying clinic fees. It is likely that Tender is the Night is a fairly accurate picture of treatment in the 1920s.

Zelda, like Nicole, was schizophrenic and it is very easy to draw comparisons between the Divers and the Fitzgeralds. Fitzgerald was not financially secure enough to be accepted by Zelda’s family as an appropriate suitor for their daughter, possibly captured in the novel by Baby’s dislike of Dick. Fitzgerald was also an alcoholic and as with Dick, spiralled into alcoholism before reaching his full potential.

Whilst in Tender is the Night Dick fades away and Nicole finds happiness with her new life, the fate of the Fitzgeralds was an altogether darker affair. Scott died aged 44 from a heart attack, no doubt in part caused by his heavy drinking. Zelda tragically died in a fire at the hospital she was being treated at – she was locked in her room awaiting electroshock therapy for her mental illness.

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Chat with Peter Bullimore
Mental Health Reading Challenge
Blurbs for the books!

Podcast with Tom at Arts and Minds Leeds

Write Up's
Dec - Jane Eyre - GUEST
Nov - A life too short - GUEST
Oct - Notes from an exhibition - GUEST
Sep - Day - GUEST
Aug - Tender is the Night - GUEST
Jul - Ariel - GUEST
Jul - Birthday Letters - GUEST
Jun - Poppy Shakespeare - GUEST
May - Why be happy when you can be normal - GUEST
Apr - I had a black dog - GUEST
Mar - The Psychopath Test - GUEST
Feb - The Silver Linings Play Book - GUEST

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Table of Contents - Guest Stars

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Full Table of Contents

Sharing Stories Book Club/ Meet up!

I made this: Unknown at 6:19 pm 0 comments

Venue: Giraffe Bar and Grill

Date: Tuesday 15th of October 2012

Time: 6pm - 8pm

Address: 6 Greek Street, Leeds, LS1 5RW

Tel: (0113) 244 1500

As the man himself (that's you Tom) puts it, our meeting in October is:

A chance to discuss books in a friendly group.

For the last few months Arts & Minds have been promoting a book every month that has some link to mental health.

In this special partnership with Leeds Book Club (that's us!) we are encouraging everyone to come along and talk about the books.

The book we are particularly focusing on is ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ by Patrick Gale. This novel tells the story of an artist with mental health issues and the family she leaves behind.

“By the end I had laughed and cried and put all his other books on my wish list. This is dense, thought-provoking, sensitive, satisfying, humorous, humane – a real treat.”
Daily Telegraph.

So get reading and see you there!

If you're interested in finding out what we've made of our previous #SharingStories, check out the links below!

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Table of Contents - Guest Stars

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Full Table of Contents

Thursday, 11 July 2013

Sharing Stories - Poppy Shakespeare Review - GUEST

I made this: Unknown at 10:17 pm 0 comments

Leeds Book Club will be participating in the Arts and Minds Network's new project on raising awareness of mental health issues.

This cracking review is provided to us by book lover @BatRachy.

POPPY SHAKESPEARE

CLARE ALLEN

BLURB

Who is mad? Who is sane? Who decides? Welcome to the Dorothy Fish, a hospital in North London. N has been a patient for thirteen years. Day after day she sits smoking in the common room and swapping medication. Like the other patients, N's ambition is never to be discharged. Then in walks Poppy Shakespeare in a short skirt and snakeskin heels. Poppy is certain she isn't mentally ill and desperate to return to her life outside and, though baffled, N agrees to help her. But in a world where everything's upside down, are they crazy enough to upset the system?

I recently re-read this to refresh my memory of it, after having read initially it when it first came out. Between reads I saw the Channel 4 adaptation, which I thought worked pretty well, especially considering how badly adapted some books are!

Anyway, I shall focus on the book…

I loved the main narrator N, who has spent her entire life submersed in mental health problems (in other family members and the community in which she lives). N is a day patient at Dorothy Fish, the local psych unit, and is convinced she will never be discharged. It becomes clear there was very little question as to whether N would be a patient in Dorothy Fish, simply because of the family and situation she heralded from. I would like to think that this is partly due to the story being told from N’s perspective, rather than the way in which local authorities truly operate. For me, this throws up a problem with fiction such as this: how much does the author know about the mental health system? (or rather, have they experienced it themselves either directly or indirectly through family/friends, and if so, how much are they putting into this novel?). I would like to think local authorities don’t ear-mark children from families with history of mental health issues to follow in the footsteps of their parent(s) into institutions, and instead they are more sensitive (I know in serious circumstances social services would be involved anyway, to help both parent and child).

The reader needs to bear in mind that the story is from N’s point of view. She feels the authorities have assumed, as she is from a long line of ‘dribblers’ (the Dorothy Fish slang for those with learning difficulties/mental health issues who use the day service), that she will go straight into the unit. We don’t know what support & assessments she has had. This is N’s version of the truth, and I’m sure if the narrator was an employee at Dorothy Fish the version of the truth would be different. I love it when a book makes you question what the true reality is. Is there one solid version of events (regardless of whether someone has mental health issues or not, everyone surely has different bias/agendas/roles to play).

This comes into play even more when we meet Poppy. Poppy is determined she is not mad (a term bandied around by the patients freely), and has been ordered to attend the Dorothy Fish. As you can imagine, all Poppy wants to do is prove she not mad and get out of there and back home to her daughter. The author Clare Allan gets this absolutely spot-on. Unfortunately, as Poppy discovers, the more you protest you are not mad upon being labelled as having mental health problems, the less likely people are to believe you, and indeed such protests are put down to being so ill you are unaware of your own wellness. Indeed, it works both ways – it is very rare that someone who asks to be sectioned is.

At this point, I can’t help thinking back to an episode of Don’t Call Me Crazy (a series following teenagers in a psych ward currently on the BBC) I saw recently where an outwardly smiling, energetic girl is admitted for depression and an eating disorder. During her treatment she starts to worsen and has numerous meetings to try new things to improve her situation, warning her she on the path to being sectioned. She is adamant it’s just empty threats and tells everyone she is fine and shouldn’t need to be there at all. The next meeting they have they decide they need to section her for her own safety.

Overall I feel the book portrays a quite real and accurate experience of a long-term day-patient. Not necessarily the way the system works (although in any unit like this there will be cynicism, speculation and rumours as to how the system works - in the case of Dorothy Fish the Ministry of Madness, and MAD money to name but a few), but the way the group works together, and the relationships between patients, definitely so. Everyone is so wrapped up in their own ‘stuff’ that although they have little cliques, ultimately they are out for themselves – their own targets (whether that be to get out of there, to stay as long as possible etc etc).

I found I recognised the assumed knowledge there was within the group, which came to the fore as Poppy was introduced to each of them by N. A little back-story would be given, but N assumes Poppy will know the intricacies of each disorder & character. In a similar vein, Dorothy Fish dribblers have similar rules to (in my experience) families; they can call each other nicknames, and they can call each other things like ‘mad’. If someone from outside of the support network/family/group of dribblers called them something similar they’d all be up in arms against the outsider. This shows, the dribblers do have a supportive network between themselves, indeed, they do worry for one another when someone is discharged, or when someone is sectioned.

Ultimately, I love this book. It smacks of a time when mental health care wasn’t top of the agenda, and as the government works to amend this, the Dorothy Fish centre changes to adopt the ‘care in the community’ stance to which I was subject to (in 2006, the year of publication). Clare Allan has worked hard to show the reforms needed in mental health care, both inpatients and out-patients. She has created this world, in a run-down area of London where there is a struggle to see who is mad and who isn’t. Where there is a struggle to see who needs help and who doesn’t. Where there is a struggle to see who is in-charge and able to care for those who need it and who isn’t.

At a time when the NHS is currently under-threat from those who think it should be run as a business, and who are more bothered about figures than the people this book comes into its own yet again.

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Table of Contents - Guest Stars

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Full Table of Contents

Saturday, 22 June 2013

Sharing Stories - Magnificent Joe by James Wheatley - Guest Review!

I made this: Unknown at 10:36 am 0 comments

(I´m away on my holidays at the moment and using internet cafe computers - which are awesome, don´t get me wrong - but make formatting and so on rather tricky. Apologies for any visual hiccups, I´ll fix as soon as possible.
Also - and rather unfairly to out contributor, I won´t have a chance to add her to our Guest Star Super Star page until I get back. I´d like to point out that this is no way makes her a less awesome Super Star Guest Star :p)

Huge thanks to our regular book clubber Becca for this write up! You can catch up with Bex on twitter @Becca_Lou18 and check out her blog HERE!

THE BLURB

Jim’s life has hit rock bottom. Locked up as a teenager for throwing the wrong sort of punch – the sort that sees another boy dead – it was over before it had even begun. Dumped back among his childhood mates, plagued by anger and guilt, he finds himself struggling to salvage something worthwhile from the wreckage of his past. While stumbling through days of heavy drinking, mindnumbing labour, and casual violence, Jim befriends Joe – a fifty-year-old man with severe learning difficulties – and together this unlikely duo keep each other afloat. But when rumours of a crime get out of control, and community prejudices start to close in, Jim must move fast before he loses everything, all over again.

A while ago an old school friend of mine who now works as a publicist tweeted about looking for people to review advanced copies of a debut novel from a Yorkshire author. I snapped up the chance but then really struggled to write a review. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy this book, I actually got pretty caught up in it. It’s just that I couldn’t think how to express my thoughts on it in a way that doesn’t sound completely clichéd. After much procrastination on the point I have accepted that this book simply is quite clichéd. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good enjoyable read, or that it isn’t good at raising awareness of issues around learning disabilities, simply that it does what it says on the tin

Jim is the bright spark among his friends, set for a future of university and all the opportunities his own father never had. On the eve of his GCSE exams Jim convinces Joe, a family friend with severe learning disabilities, to buy beer and cigarettes which he takes to a small beck near his home in County Durham to drink with his friends Geoff, Barry and Mac. When Barry’s older brother and his friend turn up a fight starts. Jim throws a punch, the other boy ends up dead and Jim spends the next six years in prison.

With his mother dying of cancer and his father committing suicide whilst he was inside, Jim has no one else but his childhood friends to rely on upon his release. Whilst Barry and Geoff are working as skilled bricklayers and beginning families, Jim has no job prospects and has never been intimate with a woman, although Barry soon remedies this by taking Jim to a prostitute on the way home from the prison. Jim starts working with Geoff and Barry and quickly falls into a routine of work, heavy drinking, sleep, repeat. However, the return of Mac, who now runs his own successful building company, starts to expose the cracks in the relationships between the three friends. Tensions are brought to a head followings Mac’s death in an accident at the site they are working at. When Jim and Geoff make clear that they no longer want to work with Barry, Barry seeks to hit his former friends where they are the most vulnerable. For Geoff this is revealing the truth about his wife Laura, for Jim, Barry seeks to play on the community’s prejudices against Joe.

From the first couple pages of Magnificent Joe I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this book. I found the writing style immediately reminded me of books I read in English class at school set in the “industrial North” with language reflecting hardworking, beer drinking stereotypes. With a trio of main characters, Jim, Geoff and Barry, bricklayers by trade who frequent the pub more than their building sites and use words like “mebbes” it’s not hard to see where this first impression came from. I suppose that this is very much written in a style that I simply don’t connect with. However, as I read on I was surprised to find myself hooked into Jim’s story, wanting to find out more about his past and how his life ended up as it is.

The writing is very much to the point, you won’t find long expressive prose here. But this is very much reflective of the story and its characters. The narrative switches between Jim’s voice, covering the period of October/November 2004 and chapters dealing with the back story of the characters written in the third person. The switch is fairly seamless and it’s easy to settle into. Overall it flows well. The story is structured in three parts. When reading this late one night I thought I would stop reading at the end of Part 1, I ended up reading the first chapter of Part 2 though as a result of the cliffhanger and me not being able to put the book down.

Central to the story is the relationship between Jim and Joe. It would be so easy for this relationship to be a sugar coated story of redemption for Jim. For the most part it's not. It seems that Jim’s relationship with Joe is built on a number of factors, particularly familiarity and a sense of duty. Joe lives with his elderly mother, referred to as “Mrs Joe” whose husband had worked with Jim’s father and taken him in upon finding he had no family of his own to go home to. Jim’s father helped Mrs Joe out with jobs around the house and Jim, feeling he let his father down and caused his suicide, feels obliged to carry on looking out for Joe and Mrs Joe.

Jim is compelling character to whom I empathised. Rather than go off to university and leave his childhood friends behind, by a sad twist of fate he ends up in prison. Upon release he has no option but to rely on those childhood friends, finding that they are now skilled within the building trade and beginning families whereas he is unskilled with a criminal record, unable to drive and has never been intimate with a woman. Unsurprisingly Jim at times is full of anger with the world and very much seems to have given up on any hopes of a better life. It’s these flaws in Jim and in other characters that make this story believable. In describing himself Jim is clear that he is a “skinhead” and a “thug” who is happy to beat people up to get what he wants. I did find the back story around Jim’s parents, particularly his father’s suicide a little melodramatic and a construct of the author to explain Jim’s connection to Joe which is unnecessary. Both parents’ deaths are another nail in the coffin of tragedy that is Jim’s life.

Although Jim clearly cares for Joe and there is both comedy and tenderness between them and the way Jim reacts to Joe is very real. The relationship makes Jim a much more rounded character. Jim is often intolerant of Joe, sometimes wishing he wasn’t around or describing how he wants to "kick him in the head" or similar when Joe is annoying him. Many of the times when he calms Joe and prevents him having a “spaz attack" it is simply to give himself an easy life. Joe, whether by chance or design, seems determined to get Jim re-engaged in the community, volunteering him to help build sets for the village pantomime.

I felt the relationship between Joe and his mother was incredibly well portrayed. Mrs Joe is a proud women and it is clear that she is fiercely protective of her son in a very much “us against the world” way. When she starts to falter we find Joe in a terrible situation, not wanting to betray his mother by asking for help yet clearly unable to cope. Like Jim we simply don’t know if when Joe says his mother is sleeping he just doesn’t understand how ill she is or whether he understands but knows she would never want outsiders to know. The moment when Jim realises that Joe has got food poisoning from attempting to cook for himself as his mother is clearly too ill to look after him is heartbreaking. It is every carer’s worst fear – how will they cope when you aren’t around anymore?

There is realism in the writing. However, I found this was quite bleak, focusing on deprivation and poverty, and played a little too heavily on stereotypes that neglect to show the whole picture. Perhaps this was down to resentment to the idea presented in this book that all the characters who wanted to make something more of themselves and raise above the poverty they were born into had their lives ruined in one way or another yet those who had no ambition were rewarded for their lack of effort.

However, the flaws in the characters aid this story in its depiction of learning disabilities and the way people with learning disabilities are treated. The suspicion and fear with which the community views Joe is, sadly, believable. As a reader you feel that the events of this book could happen, but that they shouldn’t. Although it would be easier as a reader to dismiss this book as fiction, it only takes a quick look at a news website to see that Joe’s fate is something that happens in communities throughout Britain on an all too regular basis. It’s an uncomfortable fact and Wheatley is successful in forcing his readers to recognise this.

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