Maggie & Me

(Paperback)

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Description

It's 12 October 1984. An IRA bomb blows apart the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Miraculously, Margaret Thatcher survives. In small-town Scotland, eight-year-old Damian Barr watches in horror as his mum rips her wedding ring off and packs their bags. He knows he, too, must survive. Damian, his sister and his Catholic mum move in with her sinister new boyfriend while his Protestant dad shacks up with the glamorous Mary the Canary. Divided by sectarian suspicion, the community is held together by the sprawling Ravenscraig Steelworks. But darkness threatens as Maggie takes hold: she snatches school milk, smashes the unions and makes greed good. Following Maggie's advice, Damian works hard and plans his escape. He discovers that stories can save your life and - in spite of violence, strikes, AIDS and Clause 28 - manages to fall in love dancing to Madonna in Glasgow's only gay club. Maggie & Me is a touching and darkly witty memoir about surviving Thatcher's Britain; a story of growing up gay in a straight world and coming out the other side in spite of, and maybe because of, the iron lady.

Reviews

Shocking and funny in equal measure, and will have you weeping with laughter and sorrow * Independent on Sunday *
The wonderful story of a remarkable man, Maggie & Me is heartbreaking and heartwarming. As gripping as a thriller, laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, this book will resonate long after you finish it. A triumph * SJ Watson, author of Before I Go to Sleep *
Out of poverty, brutality and prejudice, Damian Barr builds something riveting, touching and painfully funny. His account of growing up under Thatcher's regime defines the experience of a generation. At once personal and universal, Maggie & Me is a work of stealthy genius * Maggie OFarrell *
A marvellous memoir wrenching, funny and wise. I loved it! * Joanne Harris *
This amazing book tells the story of an appalling childhood with truth and clarity unsmudged by self-pity. It grips from beginning to end and leaves the reader elated at the fact that such experiences can be overcome and produce a man who can write a book so vivid, so unsentimentally forgiving, and so memorable * Diana Athill *
This book will break your heart and make you angry; then it will lift your heart and make you glad; because Damian Barr has transmuted a grim childhood into a work of art and brought forth beauty from ashes * Richard Holloway *
That Damian Barr survived his childhood is testament to his startling courage and determination.That he was then able to write about the experience with such wit, verve and candour is equally astonishing. Maggie & Me is a cause for celebration on all kinds of levels. Rejoice! * Rupert Thomson *
Damian Barr sifts through the wreckage of a horrific childhood and manages to extract humour, generosity of spirit and ultimately joy, and he does it with a literary lan that had me re-reading whole paragraphs, just for the pleasure of it. To say I loved it doesn't begin to convey the mixture of emotions - tears, laughter, anger - I felt while reading it. This book should be required reading for children who need to know that there is life beyond an appalling beginning, and for politicians who prefer to look the other way * Jojo Moyes author of Me Before You *
Like all too few memoirs, in a bloated, me-me age, Maggie & Me ends all too soon. Imagine one of the sharper Mitford sisters cruelly reborn into the family from Shameless and youve an idea of the treat in store. Barr tells his engaging, sad-funny story of a camp, bright lad in dire circumstances in Thatcher-era Motherwell in such a beguilingly confiding, arm-linking style, that I felt I'd made a new best friend only to lose them to a world of glittering opportunities. Read this at once before someone films it, as they most surely will * Patrick Gale *
This is the most vital, visceral memoir since Jeanette Wintersons Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal Barrs depiction is so pungent, so earth-shattering it's a universal story of alienation one for anyone who's ever felt desperate to escape. His childhood, evoked with such cheek-biting tenderness, now seems more real and more Technicolor than my own. I won't be happy until everyone reads this book * Patrick Strudwick *
Timely confessional zestfully observed, sharply written, and sprinkled with more lyricism and humour than a memoir of misery in Motherwell suggests * Independent *
Maggie & Me is a perfect chip supper of a memoir: nostalgic, tart, crisp and seductive. It's also sad, kind, witty, and sexy. And alarmingly educational * Louisa Young *
Brilliantly observed, searingly intimate and painfully truthful, Maggie & Me brought the eighties back to me at the same time as making me question my established views of the whole decade. In other words, like the very best books, it changed me a little * Sathnam Sanghera author of The Boy with the Topknot *
A nuanced, subtle and original account ... What could have been a flip idea with no real substance turns out to be a memoir which is both personally moving and a valuable historical document. Barrs style is conversational, intimate and convincing, and he resists every opportunity to show off. He holds his nerve tackling the unfashionableness of his thesis that Thatcher inspired even those she seemed to despise and makes us smile along the way * Literary Review *
Certain memoirs catch a moment and seem to define it, bottle it ... Damian Barr, I suspect, is about to do something of the same with this hugely entertaining book ... Full to the brim with poignancy, humour, brutality and energetic and sometimes shimmering prose, the book confounds ones assumptions about those years and drenches the whole era in an emotionally charged comic grandeur. It is hugely affecting * Sunday Times *

Author Bio

Damian Barr has been a journalist for over ten years writing mostly for The Times but also the Independent, Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, Evening Standard and Granta. He is the author of Get It Together: A Guide to Surviving Your Quarterlife Crisis, featured on Richard & Judy, and has co-written two plays for BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Faculty at the School of Life and host of the infamous Literary Salon at Shoreditch House. He lives in Brighton. @Damian_Barr