Customer Rating:  
Summary: If time could go backwards for Stuart...
Comment: ... and if it were possible against the very impossibility of such an occurrence, I would have loved to change the epilogue of this book. Not just the epilogue, but so much else in between. And not because it's a badly written book, just the opposite. I believe that the author was able to capture the very essence of his friend Stuart Shorter and at the same time convey a strong message about the vulnerability of the innocent. It is a book about a man who suffered greatly throughout his life and as a result ended up on the streets.
What Alexander Masters extrapolates from Stuart is a remarkable, incredible tale of a life lived on the edge at all times. Sometimes a river of words flow out of him. Sometimes they elude him (especially when recounting the worst parts of his life). But the author manages to get to the bottom of most of it and the reading is harrowing. And yet, despite all his terrible sufferings, drug abuse and physical problems, during some passages Stuart's humour got to me. Brief insights about life. One for all (on the mysteries of washing-machines): "I mean, you put ten socks in the machine and only seven come out, where DO they go?...And I'll tell you another thing, if you take the machine apart they ain't inside it neither." (how true!). To see that despite everything he is still able to smile conveys such... sweetness. Unfortunately, it is soon obliterated by other terrible details of his life. Still, I hope that opening up with the author after the initial reservations was somewhat therapeutic for Stuart.
The book structure is original, dotted by drawings, writings and some pictures. Stuart's voice comes out strong. The author often closes a chapter with a new, revealing detail and a compelling need to find out more. This quickly leads the reader to the next chapter.
Frustration and outrage over some details and circumstances made me swallow twice but I am glad I have read this book and made the acquaintance of Stuart Shorter. Books like these are eye-openers and rattle consciences.
"Alexander, sort it out - you're the writer. I just done the living.". A quote from page zero, which really touched me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Life Backwards
Comment: I purchased this book after watching its dramatisation on the television. Despite the subject matter, the programme had made me laugh out loud throughout and I became curious about the book.
Reading reviews of this shortly after the programme aired, I found a number that appeared as if the reviewers had not actually read the book, only watched the programme, of which they were very critical. How strange I thought. In my experience adaptations of books are often lacking, due to time restrictions and scheduling, so to judge a book solely on this, seemed, in my opinion, a little unfair.
The book sat on my bedside table for a good few months, because of other commitments. Picking it up, I tried to remind myself why I had wanted to read it. Stuart was, to be quite frank, the type of person I would cross the street to avoid; homeless, alcoholic, drug addict, violent, self harmer, a thief, psychopathic. He can reel off the names of all the prisons he has been in on request, tell you the best way to get into prison and the best way to get out of prison, the best way to steal a car, oh and once he dangled his baby son out of a window.
Stuart and the author Alexander Masters became friends during a campaign to release two charity workers Ruth Wyner and John Brock, from prison. Together they would talk to groups about the campaign, what had happened and what needed to be done to fee the pair. Then Stuart would talk about his life.
Alexander agrees to write Stuarts biography and after two years work, Stuart is shown a draft which he immediately pronounces to be 'bollocks boring'. He's after a bestseller `like what Tom Clancy writes.'
Stuart suggests that the book be written backwards.
In this way, both author and reader discover what has led Stuart's life to turn out the way it has. It is a disturbing tale. Is Stuart's behaviour excusable because of what has happened to him, I am not sure. Is Stuart's behaviour understandable because of what happened to him - absolutely.
Touching, engaging, thought provoking and very very funny - I loved this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not as b*llocks boring as Stuart first thought!
Comment: Stuart himself wanted this book to be '...something what people will read..." something with more humour and not "...b*llocks boring."
This is where I think a few reviewers have misunderstood the humour in Stuart's life. Alexander, despite his and Stu's many differences, was very close to Stuart and therefore saw the humour in some of his situations - "Stuart liked his TV. He has thrown it at the wall twice and it still works."
The dry humour amuses you and then the realisation of how unfortunate a given situation is hits you, which in my opinion gets the message across much better than a doom and gloom written book.
Again, sleeping rough, Deaf Rob steals Deaf Jackie's hearing aid to stop her leaving him and whilst the visual that Masters describes is amusing...you can't get away from the underlying message of insecurities and neediness that the characters have - just the same as the rest of us!
Of course serious issues like abuse, drugs, violence and homelessness aren't funny in themselves but people who live with everyday 'problems' such as a family member who has a disability or a mental illness often can find humour in some of their loved ones behaviour. Humour is a very human trait to get us through difficult patches otherwise we'd all be in a constant depression.
I think there was actually a good mix of humour and poignancy, the latter often at the end of a chapter to make you think.
As we travel further back in Stuart's life it's bound to be more unpleasant as it involves him being a child and we don't like reading about nasty or unjust things happening to children...but it's really well written and I thought the minimalistic use of photographs also had the effect I think the author was hoping for. Especially the one before the epilogue, of Stuart and Gavvy when they were very young - so normal looking and happy, lovely little children with their lives ahead of them.
For all the praise I've given it I did find it hard going some of the time...mainly the first half of the book...not harrowing or anything just a bit tedious. I found myself re-reading pages and if asked to review it half way through would probably have given it a 2-3 star rating simply for the idea. However it got better as we read more and more about Stuart and his past and I found him witty, honest and actually full of common sense.
It's so easy for people to walk by on the other side when it comes to the misfits in our society but reading this would surely make the hardest among us think again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply outstanding.
Comment: Stuart the man was clearly intelligent and witty, and all his potential was torn away by the appalling circumstances of his life.
Stuart the book is funny and touching, a humane account of a man no one wants to understand. Those giving poor reviews must have been reading a different book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good story, just adequately written.
Comment: STUART: LIFE BACKWARDS
By Alexander Masters
I think that majority of the raving reviews here are more about the educational value of this book. I would like to concentrate more on how well it is written.
On the educational side, we do get an insight into the life of a mad, homeless person, a symbolic figure behind all those anonymous poor chaps begging on the pavements whom we pass by ignorantly every day in our cities. It tells us a lot about alcoholism, drug culture, family violence and sexual abuse.
The writer also attempts a brief description of the system catering for homeless people and gives us a useful, broader social commentary.
One of the pervasive motives well analysed is violence based on Stuart being bullied and abused as a child and his becoming a madly violent person himself. One of the most memorable Masters's conclusions I have learned is that in a fight, `not just madness but lawlessness makes people frightened'. It follows a fight in which Stuart head-butted without a warning a bully who challenged him to a duel. Playing not by the rules very effectively scarred off the bully, the witnesses and set up a pattern of violence for Stuart who could now get a buzz out of it.
It is an interesting read if somewhat bleak on the literary side. I'm not sure if that's the grimness of the subject matter or lack of author's passion for his hero which makes our identification with the protagonist difficult. Admittedly, Stuart is a violent sociopath and a criminal, but one, who seeks help, was sexually abused as a child and bullied for his muscular dystrophy. Nonetheless his progress to social recovery and tracing the roots of his personal evil should make for a more compelling read.
It is not helpful that in quite a few instances Masters admits that Stuart's erratic behaviour annoys him greatly, yet gives no admission of pity or compassion for Stuart. Alexander Masters is an educated Guardian writer from Cambridge and a son of two writers; does he have to work more on his stiff upper lip?
Maybe the debutant writer wasn't sure if he should write objectively in a dry, Guardian manner, or be warm and more personal. Masters can very skilfully describe scenery but misses out on people's psychology. His portraits of people are rather brief and snappy like from a newspaper's weekly column rather then literary work.
The book is indeed a snappy read thanks to the narrative being mostly a dialogue with the hero. It is also an unusual biography thanks to the story told backwards, interspersed with the present meetings with Stuart and self-commentaries on the way the book was developing.
I have to admit shamefully that the dialogues were my main motivation to read the book, to learn some of the colloquial- and street lingo from the characters. I didn't encounter much of that. Stuart's expected street English is surprisingly well spoken. Only occasionally he slips into foul tongue. He seems even capable of clever self-analysis and social comments like straight from the Guardian which I suspect were dressed up by the author. That doesn't enrich the realism of the material.
It is a moving, yet somehow sketchy biography. At the end of the book I still don't know how Stuart looks or how he dresses, if it wasn't for two surprising, tiny mug shots of him (one in the appendix, why there?). I still don't know what level of intelligence Stuart or any member of his family is, or what is his background? Can he read books or newspaper? And if so, what level of understanding has he? It's all confusing because Stuart's own writing skills are moronic yet we learn on several occasions that he read the book's manuscript and had many comments on it.
That leads me to the unfortunate art work of the book. It's got plenty of weird and plainly bad drawings, a very unnecessary indulgence, I assume, of the writer's own skills. They bring nothing and are very messy (strangely, all the straight lines are drawn with a ruler!).
I don't agree with another reviewer above that there are pervasive badly constructed sentences. The dialogue form of the narrative ensures a smooth pace. The writer has talent and can produce many gems like:
`He is three months away from bath'; `she has a laugh like a train coming off its tracks'; `he is loopy like a carousel'.
The book has 6 out of 19 blurbs on the cover about how funny it is and it's being marketed to the public partly as such but it only betrays the confusion of the author and the editors. There is nothing funny about homelessness, madness, alcoholism, drugs or paedophilia. What were those reviewers thinking? Is this the way some of the middle classes try to cope with the unpredictable outcasts as long as they are swept off the streets by police and confined to the council estates and homeless' shelters?
For all my dislikes, I would definitely recommend STUART: A LIFE BACKWARDS to anyone who looks disdainfully at the beggars on the streets and while passing them by thinks: Why don't they just get a job? This book will answer your ignorant question once for all.
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