- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Tindal Street Press (Feb 1 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 095479138X
- ISBN-13: 978-0954791384
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 281 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
A new novelist tackles a taboo subject head on and with humanity—his aim to show the truth of marginalized modern-day lives
This hard-hitting fiction, told with a distinctive Bristolian voice, tells the story of the Brewer family—mom Lisa, brother Jason, and daughter Shawnie—plus Lisa's so-called lover, Steve. Over the course of one intense summer, they each tell their own off-kilter version of the events in their lives. Shawnie, just 13, dreams of a normal life: a lock on the bathroom door, clean clothes for school, and no wild parties with her mom as the centerfold. A "diamond of a girl," she tries to keep the family in order—but prostitution, drink, and violence are eating away at them all, leading towards a horror that's almost too much to bear. In dialect voices that create a claustrophobic domestic world, the four residents of Lurgan Walk tell a visceral, darkly humorous tale. This is an unsettling yet compassionate novel about family life gone very wrong—a hell just down the road.
About the Author
Ed Trewavas has held jobs as a van driver, a technical author, an office mule and a sports journalist. He has worked in South Bristol in a social work capacity for the last 13 years.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The curtains were closed but a bit of sun crept through where the ook was broke and lit up the crumbs of pizza crust caught in the airs around er belly button. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The curtains were closed but a bit of sun crept through where the ook was broke and lit up the crumbs of pizza crust caught in the airs around er belly button. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
5.0 out of 5 stars
An everyday story of feral folk, Aug 22 2006
By Robin Benson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Shawnie (Paperback)
Ed Trewavas has written an impressive first novel and given extra credibility because as a social worker in Bristol, England he has come across many of the situations he describes so graphically. The four members of the Brewer family are as soiled a bunch as you are likely to meet but they do exist up and down the country as a permanent underclass.
The two males, lover Steve and son Jason (15) are predictably in control of the females, mum Lisa (29) and daughter Shawnie (13). I've included the ages because this is one of the main points about these families, Lisa had Jason and Shawnie while very young and most likely dropped out of school, lived with the two children on welfare, struck up relationships with preying male partners who come and go. The males exploit the females sexually and the Shawnies of these families become pregnant and the cycle continues for another decade. Trewavas cleverly blends the main ingredients in these characters lives: endless casual sex, violence, drugs and drink, into a strong narrative that makes this family quite fascinating.
The novel is written mostly in a Bristol dialect and I did have some problems with this because it frequently slowed down my understanding and I had to re-read a sentence to decipher the words in dialect that had been spelt phonetically. Mum Lisa, in particular, speaks with a very strong accent, for instance, when asked where Jason is she replies, 'Well, I sees em, don't I? I sees ehm most days, but e ain't sleepen ovurl ours.' It helps if you keep a Bristol accent in your head (possible difficult for American readers) to translate all of this dialect. The only time the phonetic spelling seems to have come unstuck is the dropping of the h from hand, this requires an apostrophe to replace the h otherwise it could be read as 'and' yet still make sense in context. Removing the h from hit, for example, is no problem because it would make no sense in the sentence.
'Shawnie' is a very British novel but unfortunately teenagers like her and her family probably exist in most socially deprived areas of North America.
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