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This Boy
Alan Johnson
2013, 297 pages
Nonfiction
A memoir about the postwar London childhood of a Labour party politician doesn’t necessarily sound like a page turner, but Alan Johnson‘s charming and moving tale, This Boy, was just that. Johnson’s mother, Lily, raised him and his sister Linda to be polite, caring, and studious despite numbing poverty – Johnson recalls being permanently hungry, and the family didn’t have an indoor toilet until 1964. Linda is the real heroine of the story, as she cared for her brother almost exclusively during their mother’s hospital stays and became the family breadwinner at age 16 during Lily’s final illness. Her fierce love and support of both her mother and brother are inspiring. That Johnson remembers his childhood with any fondness at all is remarkable; more than that, he is generous in his recollections of friends and neighbors who were kind to them.
It’s amazing to read about how very different the world was only about half a century ago. I was absorbed in the detailed descriptions of 50s and 60s London, its war-scarred buildings and racial tension, neighborhood grocers and nearly car-free streets. From his schools and his job delivering paraffin oil to the solace he found in music and reading to his obsessions with Queens Park Rangers, Mod style, and the Beatles, Johnson evokes his childhood in small stories that illuminate a time and place, as well as a particular life.
If you like well-told stories of love overcoming hardship, like Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes or James McBride’s The Color of Water, you’ll enjoy This Boy.
