Don't Mess with the Best

Barry Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave, Stan Barstow's Joby, Bill Naughton's The Goalkeeper's Revenge, Keith Waterhouse's There Is A Happy Land, David Storey's Saville. In the esteemed tradition of British working class childhood depicted through fiction comes Sean Egan's superb collection Don't Mess With The Best. In these fifteen tales describing the adventures, escapades, high jinks and set-backs of children and teenagers, Egan captures the 1970s as acutely as did the aforementioned writers their eras. Whether writing about a skinhead who realises that his hard-man status means nothing to a woman interviewing him for a job, a ten-year-old tomboy whose kindness nullifies the embarrassment produced by peer pressure in her new, male best mate, a 13-year-old who realises to his horror that a girlie magazine he has hidden in his mother's flat has disappeared, a boy who is swept up by the illusion of being as tough as his playmate with humiliating results, or a football hooligan whose crushing anonymity is replaced by exhilarating fame on match days, Egan's powers of observation, flawless ear for speech and technical dexterity make for a collection bursting with life and studded with pleasures. Two former winners of the greatest prize in British fiction, the Booker, have garlanded this collection already and more laurels are sure to come for an author who grants us an incisive view of a fascinating and rarely seen segment of the world. STANLEY MIDDLETON (BOOKER PRIZE WINNER 1974):"These stories are interesting, intelligent and well-written. Children who are approaching, putting up with or getting out of their teenage years are described with lively observation and appropriate language. Sometimes we may not like or approve of them, but we cannot but feel some twinges of pity for them. Tears often flow from the eyes of these toughs. With the older characters the scars of the old life are still to be seen on characters who are much more like us, a difficulty handled well and admirably. These are clever, strong stories about a group we rarely come across." DAVID STOREY (BOOKER PRIZE WINNER 1976): "I was struck by their authenticity (not easily acquired) and, almost paradoxically, their sensitivity. They acquire a momentum of their own as the feeling of a single personality (the narrator) develops, deepens and broadens - culminating in a fitting climax, 'Me and Jools', which with a dynamic of its own, resonates most strongly. The sense of understatement plays a not inconsiderable part in what feels like original material - original, not least, in its fusing of two cultures." About the Author Sean Egan is a journalist, author and editor specialising in popular culture and sport. He has written for, among other outlets, Billboard, Billboard.com, Classic Rock, Death Ray, Discoveries, Goldmine, Guitar, Inside United (official Manchester United magazine), Record Collector, RollingStone. com, Serve And Volley, SFX, Sky Sports, Tennis World, TV Film Memorabilia, Uncut and Vox. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including works on The Animals, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones. One of his books - Jimi Hendrix and the Making of 'Are You Experienced' - was nominated for an Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. His novel Sick Of Being Me was published in 2003. This work, which had a rock industry backdrop, boasted cover endorsements from the likes of Charles R Cross, award winning biographer of Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, Frank Allen of The Searchers, Gary Valentine of Blondie and Vic Briggs and John Steel of The Animals. Among the stories included in Don't Mess With The Best is 'The Interview', which was shortlisted in the 1998 London Writers Competition.