Description

Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. It was a time of Airfix models, wargames, conkers and frugality: Geoff’s father splurges on a mono record player – before imposing a blockade on buying records.

But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded to Dyer’s generation. A grammar-school education leads to books, prog rock (on a new stereo), girls, beer and, eventually, a place at Oxford. He would go on to embrace a life his parents could barely recognise. In Homework, Dyer returns to the source and asks what it means to live through an era of complex social transformation.

Publisher Review

Dyer is wonderful on the strangeness of remembering itself * * New York Times * * Droll, erudite, digressive, self-deprecating, laid-back rather than standup in his humour – the Geoff Dyer voice is unmistakable * * Guardian * * Homework bursts with working-class pride, a fond and mournful belief in the possibility of the British welfare state * * LA Times * * If you’ve read Dyer before then you’ll need no persuasion to read this book. If you haven’t, it’s the perfect place to start — JOHN SELF * * The Times * * Geoff Dyer and I nearly share a name and a birth year. We were born in different countries, however, under different circumstances. No matter. Every page of this exquisite, witty memoir brought back a flood of memories and emotions that seemed to be my own, so lovingly and precisely does Dyer articulate them. A heartfelt book by a supremely intelligent writer — JEFFREY EUGENIDES While the subject of Homework is ostensibly Geoff Dyer, as ever his interest is really something tangential. Class is “the treacle that gets everywhere in England” . . . Dyer conjures up a Cheltenham of rusty allotment sheds and recycled school dinners — JOHANNA THOMAS-CORR * * Sunday Times * * A jacuzzi of a book: soothing and fizzing at the same time — JOAN BAKEWELL This acutely observed memoir of postwar England might be the highlight of [Dyer’s] illustrious four-decade career . . . This Gloucestershire lad turned boomer Proust is his own man, and he has written a highly original memoir that will provoke, amuse, beguile — and endure * * Financial Times * * The Geoff Dyer voice is unmistakeable . . . [an] evocation of a lost era, a postwar culture eager to embrace new freedoms — BLAKE MORRISON * * Guardian * * Dyer’s most personal book yet, this is a moving but characteristically droll account of family, as well as an astute retrospective on post-war Britain — LUKE WARDE * * Irish Sunday Independent * *