A Child in Time (Stuart: A Life Backwards - Alexander Masters)

Member Name: helican

Product:	Stuart: A Life Backwards - Alexander Masters
Date:	11/07/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some thought-provoking writing & a great character study

Disadvantages: upsetting & nasty in places

A labour of love by journalist & one-time homeless hostel-worker Alexander Masters, this is the life story of Stuart Shorter. When we meet him he is busy confounding the expectations of all the professionals by making a go of living in his new flat & weaning himself off heroin, having only recently been a long-term homeless, drug-addled, knife-obsessed alcoholic.

Masters works back in time through the periods of Stuart's life, punctuated by violence & homelessness & jail, & the further we go back the more we learn about what caused him to become this chaotic, violent, unhappy grown man.

Stuart is a colourful character & his voice is heard throughout, ranging from competely barking to comical to wise & profound.

Using Stuart's insights & his own thoughts on the cycle of homelessness, Masters unravels why anyone would rather risk lice & pneumonia & hypothermia living in a doorway than get a flat, & makes sense of the chaos of life on the streets that baffles the rest of the population.

It's a sensitive & thoughtful study, both of Stuart himself, his troubled family & the homeless population in general.

The conversations between Shorter & Masters are framed by the campaign in which they're involved, to free two homeless hostel managers jailed when - despite their best efforts - drugs were being sold in their hostel. It's a sobering story but provides a lot of interesting material about hostel life, & about the petty inflexibility of the legal system & how it can destroy the lives of decent people.

A Life Backwards is heartbreaking & hard to read in places but enormously rewarding as well because of its touching descriptions of Stuart (which honour the man but also give a face to the anonymous homeless) & the understanding it gives of a desperately complicated, difficult social problem.

Summary: a heartbreaking, insightful, funny study of a survivor of homelessnes.