The Coward
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15
Ratings1
Average rating2
A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK After a car accident Jarred discovers he’ll never walk again. Confined to a ‘giant roller-skate’, he finds himself with neither money nor job, a shoplifting habit, an addiction to painkillers and strangers treating him like he’s an idiot. Worse still, he’s forced to live back home with his estranged father. Trying to piece himself together, Jarred comes to realise that things don’t have to stay broken after all. The Coward is about hurt and forgiveness, how the world treats disabled people, and how we write and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about our lives – and try to find a happy ending.
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I knew nothing about this book. I only started reading it because of the Irvine Welsh plaudit on the front. I thought it might be interesting. I'd worked in spinal as a student and enjoyed it. I'd seen the strength needed to accept your new self. I'd watched people struggle. I thought I knew it all.
I wasn't expecting to get so emotionally involved. I didn't expect to read the last few pages through a blur of tears.
It's not a memoir, I thought it was when I realised the protagonist was called Jarred McGinnis. But it's not the author.
The fictionalising of the author isn't new, it's been done well and badly by better and worse than McGinnis. But it's a bold move for a debut novel. I think it worked well. To paraphrase McGinnis (the author) if someone in a wheelchair writes about a guy ending up in a wheelchair everyone is going to assume it's about him. May as well jump right into it and name that protagonist after yourself. Whatever.
It's a good story, he writes well and is engaging. And it made me cry, not many books do that to me. I'd recommend it to anyone and look forward to reading more of his writing.
