I thought it went wrong somewhere! (Where did it all go right - Andrew Collins)

Member Name: marymoose

Product:	Where did it all go right - Andrew Collins
Date:	25/10/09 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Parts are interesting, fairly easy to read if you ignore the footnotes

Disadvantages: Footnotes, repetitiveness, boring

---Intro---
I had really high hopes for the book when I chose it from the charity book list at work for the grand total of 25p. Having read numerous 'sob story' autobiographies (nothing against the authors of these tragic tales, but they do tend to roll into one after a while) I was eager to read an account of a 'normal' and happy childhood! Andrew Collin's "Where did it all go right?" should have been right up my street, or so I thought!


---The Book---
The front cover has a picture of Andrew as a young boy and houses, with a big title and the subtitle "Growing up normal in the 70s". Disappointingly there are no photos in the book (aside from one of him as a toddler on the inside cover, and one of him now on the back) which is something I like when reading autobiographies. In addition to this, since Andrew is an artist and much of the book is spent describing his pictures (particularly those in his diary) it seems a great shame that none of these were included.

The book was published in 2003, and is 319 pages (actual book is longer as it includes the first chapter of his next book) which I have to say at this stage was far too long for what was in it.


---The Story---
Andrew Collins (you can find out more about the author here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Collins_(broad caster) ) was born in Northampton in 1965, and the book is really about his first 18 years, but mainly concentrating on 1972 to 1983. Sure enough it's a nice enough childhood, as he points out several times (the repetitiveness does become a bit of a theme) how he was lucky enough to have 4 grandparents (and yes he was lucky). Not a particularly wealthy family (they did become more well-off in 1980 which led to holidays in Jersey, and he says that this is when he sees his childhood as ending), but by no means poor. Mother, father, younger brother and sister. Happy times at school, family holidays in Wales, colour TV and lots of toys - no major problems with anything really! Sounds nice, and for the most part I can relate to that, and I'm sure that many people can.

Since I was born in 1981 and I am female, I was never going to be able to relate completely to Andrew's tales. However, on some level I could - having a brother born in 1970 probably helped as a lot of things sounded familiar. And, although 16 years later that I was growing up, certain things were still similar in particular the food (there's far more choice these days, and not to mention this focus on 'healthy' eating). However, the fact that I was never going to relate to everything shouldn't really have been a problem, I should have enjoyed the book for what it was.


---The Structure, and more about the story---
This is where the book starts to fall down. Much of the book is made up from selected extracts from Andrews diary (which he kept from the age of 6), and that is fine. It reminded me a bit of reading my brother's summer holiday diary from when he was a child. However, between the diary sections Andrew tells the story of his childhood. What this means is that everything in the book is repeated at least once. He will tell the story, and then later we will read the same story as we read the diary extracts. This can get quite confusing as we've already moved onto the next year and then we're going back to reading the diary from previously. To be honest it wasn't really a problem at the start of the book, but it really started to get tedious after a while.

I realise that children's diaries are repetitive and pretty boring (I destroyed mine thankfully as I wouldn't want the embarrassment of anyone reading them). However, the descriptions, particularly of each meal time (lots of beans, fishfingers, chips, cakes and sandwiches) did get annoying. I realise that the book was 'selected' extracts, I dread to think how long and boring the full thing would have been. Even as it was I felt he could have selected far fewer extracts to share with us. I'm not even sure the extracts were necessary when he told the whole story anyway.

If anything, it was even more tedious reading the diary from the teenaged years. While it could be thought of as cute whilst reading the diary of a small child, reading the boring descriptions of what he bought at the shops and what he did at school, and which girl he talked to (and there really is explicit detail about...well...every explicitly boring detail), and who was acting as a 'loon'...well, it just didn't hold my interest. I'm sure my diaries (not that I kept them religiously, and generally gave up in February) would hold absolutely no interest to anyone either! I could accept the poor spelling (which apparently was deliberate) and strange language (hey, we all have stupid words we use as teenagers). What I couldn't come to terms with was the stupid comments written about what was said (in the footnotes, which I'm coming to), I just didn't find the author's sense of humour in the slightest bit amusing!

Perhaps if I was 16 years older and male then I might have been more interested, relating more to the comics and magazines and TV programmes etc. However, I imagine that even then I'd get far more out of spending an hour down the pub reminiscing about my childhood with my mates!


---Footnotes footnotes everywhere---
At the start of the book in the acknowledgements Andrew says that it is thanks to reading Martin Amis' "Experience" autobiography that "gave him the conviction to run footnotes on the page". At the time I thought nothing of it. However, as I read, I quickly got irritated beyond belief by these footnotes. Honestly, some of the pages were half filled with footnotes. Each time I went to read a footnote I found that I completely lost my place in the text, but more annoyingly the footnotes were in general (with a couple of exceptions) the most boring pieces of information, for instance about the spelling of a school friend's surname, or what some random kid's dad worked as, or some other really useless pointless piece of information that I didn't want to know, and usually didn't add anything to the story.

By the time I was nearing the end of the book I had given up bothering to read them, I doubt I missed out on much.


---Final Thoughts---
I did enjoy the book as I first started reading, and some parts of it were interesting. However, the repetitiveness and the footnotes soon made me want to give up - in fact the book took me weeks to read which is ridiculous (for me)! I wasn't even interested enough at the end to read the first chapter of the book's sequel which is about student life in the 1980s.

I certainly wouldn't recommend that anyone reads this, unless perhaps they were born between 1960 and 1970 and preferably are male. However, even then I wouldn't expect too much. If you had a 'normal' and happy childhood in the 1970s, just spend some time thinking about that instead.

As for me, I couldn't resist the urge - I'm now reading a sob story autobiography!


PS. I have deliberately been repetitive and boring at times in this review - to illustrate!

Summary: Only read if you love footnotes...