Homework: A Memoir

'Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny' Tessa Hadley 'An irresistible writer' Richard Ford Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the post-war settlement. It captures his time at primary school - discovering the tactile delights of Airfix, the combative seasons of conkers and plagues of verrucas at the local swimming baths. Then, at eleven, comes the crux, the exam that decided the future of generations of British school kids: splitting them between secondary modern and grammar schools. One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to Cheltenham Grammar School to face the tribulations of teenage life - sport, gig-going, romantic fumblings, fights (well, getting punched in the face) - and other misadventures a place where he develops a love of literature (and beer and prog rock). At the threshold of university, Dyer gets his first intimations that a short geographical journey - just forty miles up the A40 - might drastically change the trajectory of his life. Recalling an eroded but strangely resilient England, Homework traces roots that extend into the deep foundations of class society. dyer carries us back, with characteristic comic affection, to the joys and lingering questions of every childhood, and asks what it means to live through an era of intense transformation.

About the Author :
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

Review :
If you've read Dyer before then you'll need no persuasion to read this book. If you haven't, it's the perfect place to start 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 While the subject of Homework is ostensibly Geoff Dyer, as ever his interest is really something tangential. Class is "the treacle that gets everywhere in England" . . . Dyer conjures up a Cheltenham of rusty allotment sheds and recycled school dinners A jacuzzi of a book: soothing and fizzing at the same time This acutely observed memoir of postwar England might be the highlight of [Dyer's] illustrious four-decade career . . . This Gloucestershire lad turned boomer Proust is his own man, and he has written a highly original memoir that will provoke, amuse, beguile -- and endure The Geoff Dyer voice is unmistakeable . . . [an] evocation of a lost era, a postwar culture eager to embrace new freedoms Dyer's most personal book yet, this is a moving but characteristically droll account of family, as well as an astute retrospective on post-war Britain Geoff Bloody Dyer - without doubt one of contemporary Eng. Lit.'s most successful, intellectually playful and stylistically distinctive voices Dyer is adept at combining an alluring nostalgia with a trenchant understanding of class anxiety and adolescent restlessness, and is very funny to boot Dyer has produced something exceptional - a work that at one moment reduced me to fits of giggles (with its riffs, say, on school dinners), and at others made me think - about class, memory, or how Britain has changed. If you haven't read Dyer before, Homework is the "perfect place to start"