Gary
It's only towards the end of this book that the thing that's missing, a feeling that's nagged away for some time, becomes evident - this is a rare autobiography (unexpectedly so from this writer) in which the subject is tangential to the narrative. Alexei Sayle has but a walk-on, or walk around (there's a lot of that), part in his own story. I suspect that may be rectified in Volume Two since, as the title suggests, he's a schoolboy pretty much throughout these 300 or so pages.
For all that somewhat empty centre, there's still much to enjoy in what is, essentially, a series of amusing, occasionally funny, often insightful, vignettes. At its heart are the three persons who dominate the narrative - Sayle's mother Molly, his father Joe and the Communist Party.
Molly is a fractious, domineering, Jewish woman who gave up everything to marry Joe and the Communist Party, perhaps not quite in that order. A shrieking mother, a true-believer and panicky wife, she is also charismatic, loving and unforgettable. It would be easy to tag her as a caricature, another of Alexei's flights of surreal fantasy that constitute his comic signature, but women like her exist (or existed) in Liverpool, so there was no stretch required from me.
Joe is also familiar. A quiet, driven man who has a gift for befriending strangers and gives almost all his considerable energy to the National Union of Railwaymen and communism at home and abroad.
There's a lot of abroad in this book, since Joe's rail pass gives free travel around Europe and the Sayles, looking across the road at daytrippers to Rhyl or seven days in Blackpool families, of course do the contrary and bundle a young Alexei on to the expresses to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. Such exotic destinations yield one picaresque tale after another, but also open Alexei's eyes to the distance between propaganda at home and reality overseas. That, and an unsuccessful if not unhappy time at grammar school, where he stood out as awkward and gobby (not easy in Liverpool, that) make the boy the iconoclast the man was to become. Though largely agreeing with the Marxists' diagnoses of the ills of society, he fails to subscribe to The Party's cures and is wholly unsuited to its ascetic, joyless culture.
Ten years younger than Sayle, his brief but poignant descriptions of his (and my) home city strike me as perceptive and true, both on the macro-scale of the insensitivity of idealistic town planners and the micro-scale of the uglification of bus logos and railway uniforms. Unlike so many of us, Sayle is not a sentimental Scouser and, like me, was keen to get away to London and not so keen to return. Other than that, and a fairly standard account of only child loneliness and insecurity, we don't learn a whole lot more about his interior life - maybe that's coming next.
Is it funny? It is, but at least as much Peculiar as Ha! Ha! - but, if you want to hear the laughlines, YouTube is only a click away.
Originally posted at bsky.app.
It's only towards the end of this book that the thing that's missing, a feeling that's nagged away for some time, becomes evident - this is a rare autobiography (unexpectedly so from this writer) in which the subject is tangential to the narrative. Alexei Sayle has but a walk-on, or walk around (there's a lot of that), part in his own story. I suspect that may be rectified in Volume Two since, as the title suggests, he's a schoolboy pretty much throughout these 300 or so pages.
For all that somewhat empty centre, there's still much to enjoy in what is, essentially, a series of amusing, occasionally funny, often insightful, vignettes. At its heart are the three persons who dominate the narrative - Sayle's mother Molly, his father Joe and the Communist Party.
Molly is a fractious, domineering, Jewish woman who gave up everything to marry Joe and the Communist Party, perhaps not quite in that order. A shrieking mother, a true-believer and panicky wife, she is also charismatic, loving and unforgettable. It would be easy to tag her as a caricature, another of Alexei's flights of surreal fantasy that constitute his comic signature, but women like her exist (or existed) in Liverpool, so there was no stretch required from me.
Joe is also familiar. A quiet, driven man who has a gift for befriending strangers and gives almost all his considerable energy to the National Union of Railwaymen and communism at home and abroad.
There's a lot of abroad in this book, since Joe's rail pass gives free travel around Europe and the Sayles, looking across the road at daytrippers to Rhyl or seven days in Blackpool families, of course do the contrary and bundle a young Alexei on to the expresses to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. Such exotic destinations yield one picaresque tale after another, but also open Alexei's eyes to the distance between propaganda at home and reality overseas. That, and an unsuccessful if not unhappy time at grammar school, where he stood out as awkward and gobby (not easy in Liverpool, that) make the boy the iconoclast the man was to become. Though largely agreeing with the Marxists' diagnoses of the ills of society, he fails to subscribe to The Party's cures and is wholly unsuited to its ascetic, joyless culture.
Ten years younger than Sayle, his brief but poignant descriptions of his (and my) home city strike me as perceptive and true, both on the macro-scale of the insensitivity of idealistic town planners and the micro-scale of the uglification of bus logos and railway uniforms. Unlike so many of us, Sayle is not a sentimental Scouser and, like me, was keen to get away to London and not so keen to return. Other than that, and a fairly standard account of only child loneliness and insecurity, we don't learn a whole lot more about his interior life - maybe that's coming next.
Is it funny? It is, but at least as much Peculiar as Ha! Ha! - but, if you want to hear the laughlines, YouTube is only a click away.
Originally posted at bsky.app.