by the same author, and was impressed. This was a real mess in comparison. This is a story of several families living in Birmingham in the 1970s, all with sons going to a direct grant school in the city. The fathers of these boys work in or have work connected to the vast British Leyland (as it was then) motor manufacturing plant at Longbridge, on both sides of the management/worker divide . Now I come to the first problem, I never really worked out who was who, which parents belonged to which children. Despite the fact that all boys in this kind of school were always known only by their surnames I didn't really get worked out what these were either. As a description of male adolescence this is competent but hardly revelatory. It could well have been a fascinating study of the industrial relations of the time, or the politics of the 1970s (the IRA Birmingham pub bombing features), but this book does not really add to the sum of human knowledge. It is not a comic novel (although there some funny passages). I'm not sure I can describe it as well written either. Towards the end there is a thirty page ramble 'written' by one of the main characters examining his 'love affair'. It is so appalling that I found it almost unreadable. There are other diatribes on politics, nationalism and the Ireland that just made me wince. The style is pedestrian, tedious and I truly didn't care about the fates of any of these people. A rating of 4/10 - unfortunately.
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