Homework: A Memoir

(Hardback, Main)

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Description

'Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny - I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story' TESSA HADLEY

In Homework, Geoff Dyer reflects on his childhood and what it means to come of age in England in the 60s and 70s, in a country shaped by the aftermath of the Second World War but accelerating towards change.

He was born in Cheltenham in the late fifties, the only child of a dinner lady and a planning engineer. Raised in a working-class area, Geoff and his mates found much joy recreating battles with their beloved Tommy guns, kicking a beachball around until its untimely death, and collecting anything and everything they could find; football cards, conkers and Action Man figures. When Geoff passes his 11-plus exams he gets in to a Cheltenham Grammar School, a school which drastically changes the trajectory of his life.

Reviews

'Homework is wonderful Geoff-Dyer writing, which we've all learned to crave; something to delight and to move us and to edify us on every page. I find him an irresistible writer' - RICHARD FORD
'Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny - I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story' - TESSA HADLEY
'Geoff Dyer and I nearly share a name and a birth year. We were born in different countries, however, under different circumstances. No matter. Every page of this exquisite, witty memoir brought back a flood of memories and emotions that seemed to be my own, so lovingly and precisely does Dyer articulate them. A heartfelt book by a supremely intelligent writer' - JEFFREY EUGENIDES
'A jacuzzi of a book: soothing and fizzing at the same time' - JOAN BAKEWELL
'Has Geoff Dyer set aside his matchless dry wit and sly indirection to finally reveal to us the formation and workings of his inmost heart No, better, he has employed those gifts in that cause. Homework is funny and beautiful and not homework at all' - JONATHAN LETHEM
'A wonderfully immersive portrait - observant, funny, touching - of a sixties childhood and seventies adolescence in provincial England, as Geoff Dyer takes us deep into a world only barely recognisable now' - DAVID KYNASTON
'Homework is an elegiac Boys'-Own story of 1960s English boyhood, and like the best kind of boy it is daft, poignant, cheeky, familiar and irresistible' - LOUISA YOUNG
'Homework is a stunning feat of retrieval, rendered in such minute detail you would think Dyer had consumed an entire tin of madeleines. Having painted himself into an autobiographical corner, he has produced a masterpiece. Dyer on Dyer-his best conundrum so far' - BILLY COLLINS
'Dyer is as beguiling and brutally honest as ever. For grown up 'only' children everywhere. You can almost smell the baked beans and the Airfix glue' - IAN McSHANE

Author Bio

Geoff Dyer is an award-winning author of four novels and numerous non-fiction books, including Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, Zona and, most recently, The Last Days of Roger Federer. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Dyer lives in Los Angeles, where he is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.

geoffdyer.com