The Grass Arena: An Autobiography (Penguin Modern Classics)

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However, I found it tedious and repetitive, written by a self-destructive and very unpleasant character who didn't show any remorse for any damage he'd done, and although he may have had some sort of reason for his alcoholism, that doesn't excuse him, and doesn't make it an interesting read.

When I was a young boy, there was a chess tournament in our hometown and my eldest brother got the first prize while the second got the second place.Because there's little introspection and understanding of deeper emotions and issues it appears there's not a lot of humanity to Healy's writing, especially during his wino days.

Used books have different signs of use and might not include supplemental materials such as CDs, Dvds, Access Codes, charts or any other extra material. From then on, (s)he can look the wino in the eye and think "I know all about you, for I have been there too".Healy tells us enough about his childhood in a London Irish family with a brutal father and little money to understand how drink became both solace and security, but it’s his vivid description of complete alcohol dependency and life on the streets, told entirely without self-pity, that will stay long in the mind of anyone who reads The Grass Arena, together with the surprising development that leads to a most unlikely route away from the streets. Therefore, Hershey's work I can identify with in the extreme: the blackouts, the amnesia, the violence, the harrowing sickness of alcoholic withdrawal, the individually apocalyptic effects of ant-abuse, the doom-laden and unsympathetic London streets, and ultimate redemption. The story of the author, who lived as a complete alcoholic vagrant for years and had many brushes with death, then finds redemption in prison through chess and strides out of the gutter, is one of the most life-affirming things I think I have ever read. I watched for a while but he seemed to be making no progress at all, so I just got stuck into another bottle… there was so much drink left you couldn’t really believe in death.

There is no perceptible distance between the words, which seem to have chosen themselves and the experiences from which they blossomed like a garden of wild flowers. It depicts a world that is so familiar to us as we pass by such people almost every day, but yet is a world thoroughly alien and one that we hardly even contemplate. Each day you have to prove yourself anew in toughness or lack of it, in stealing, fighting, begging and drinking. In the end, this is a worthy first book though its intensity, slightly mishandled, doesn't make it a great memoir or strictly speaking a classic.Wow, what a book, feeling guilty for the one star rating already, but it was such a painful read that the only honest review for me would be 'didn't like it' hence the one star. Out of school by 14, pressed into the army and intermittently in prison, Healy became an alocholic early on in life.