Maggie & Me

February 15, 2014
Memoir of the difficulties of growing up poor and gay in Margaret Thatcher's Scotland. Luckily, journalist Barr (Get It Together: A Guide to Surviving your Quarterlife Crisis, 2005) had a strong intelligent streak, a great love of books and a series of true friends. The author never had an awakening to his homosexuality; he, and everyone around him, just knew he was gay. The collapse of his parents' marriage when he was 8 threw him into a difficult situation with Logan, the "wicked stepfather." When his mother had a cerebral hemorrhage and spent six months away recuperating, Logan showed his true colors, poisoning the author and trying to drown him. While seeking to avoid Logan for all those months, Barr was desperately afraid to report him for fear of retribution against his sister. Ultimately, school became his saving grace, even with the taunting of schoolmates. He joined any club that would keep him after school for extended periods of time ("I'm on every team at Brannock High School that doesn't have anything to do with throwing, catching, or kicking a ball"), and he also ended up at the top of his class in just about every subject. In addition to his personal story, the author follows the effects of Thatcher's economic policies, as she canceled the free school milk, beat back the coal miners and closed the steel mill where his father worked. If ever a prime minister was hated, it was in the council houses of Britain; her name couldn't be uttered without an expletive. Few readers will blame the author or anyone else angered by her methods; she massively cut social programs and suggested taxing the poor due to the fact that there were more of them. While it should be heartbreaking, Barr tells a wonderful story, demonstrating the remarkable resilience of a child not only surviving, but succeeding in such a grand way.

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March 1, 2014

British journalist Barr's memoir begins with the news that Margaret Thatcher has survived the 1984 IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton. He is eight years old. From that moment on, Thatcher becomes his role model for survival. He survives his mother's abusive boyfriend, his homophobic classmates, and his mother's drunken friends in their council house. Told with dark humor, Barr's book offers vivid descriptions of life in working-class Scotland.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2014
British journalist Barr's affecting memoir begins when he is eight and witnesses, on television, the escape of Margaret Thatcher from the notorious Brighton bombing. Like the redoubtable Thatcher, Barr is a survivor; indeed, his story of growing up in Scotland is one of surviving the eighties, the decade that Thatcher defined. It wasn't easy: he was battered and beaten by his mother's vile boyfriend, his mother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and, because she was unable to work, the impoverished family lived on government allotments in a council house. Always the tallest boy in his class, he was, he writes, scarecrow skinny and speccy with join-the-dots spots, bottle-opener buck teeth and a thing for waistcoats. Plus I get free school dinners and I'm gay. Yes, Barr's memoir is also a coming-out story. At turns tender, funny, and sad, Barr's smoothly written account is moving and always engaging. Though Thatcher, a spectral presence in the book, visited havoc on life in Scotland, Barr remains grateful to her for inspiring him to excel in order to escape his miserable life. And so, as his memoir attests, he has.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)