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A portrait of a young boy, who keeps passing exams―and of a changing England in the 1960s and 1970s.
The only child of a sheet-metal worker and a dinner lady who worked at the canteen of the local school, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of the Depression and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, this loving memoir is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the post-war settlement, of which the author was an unconscious beneficiary. The crux comes at the age of eleven with the exam that decided the future of generations of British schoolkids: secondary modern or the transformative possibilities of grammar school? One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to grammar school, where he develops a love of literature (and beer and prog rock).
Mapping a path from primary school through the tribulations of teenage sport, gig-going, romantic fumblings, fights (well, getting punched in the face), and other misadventures with comic affection, Homework takes us to the threshold of university, where Dyer gets the first intimations that a short geographical journey―just forty miles―might extend to the length of a life.
Recalling an eroded but strangely resilient England, Homework traces, in perfectly phrased and hilarious detail, roots that extend into the deep foundations of class society.
"Dyer's reminiscences brim with irony and black humor about an era that trumpeted progress, but was suffused with postimperial decline...The result is an arresting and evocatively detailed take on family and society." —Publishers Weekly
"His portrait of an England emerging from the Second World War into the comparative affluence of the 1960s makes for touching reading...Still—this being Dyer—his eye for quirky paradox never falters." —Kirkus Reviews
"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
"Reading Homework is like going for a long walk with a close friend, whose singular voice—inventive, absorbing, a little rakish, and wonderfully dry—will hold your interest for hours on end. Geoff Dyer is a profoundly intelligent memoirist. His childhood emerges from these pages as both his utterly distinctive experience and the shared history of a nation." —Merve Emre
"Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive, and hilariously funny—I loved it. A piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story." —Tessa Hadley
This information about Homework was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1958. He was educated at the local Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is currently living in Los Angeles where he is Writer in Residence at USC.
He is the author of four novels: Paris Trance, The Search, The Colour of Memory, and Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; a critical study of John Berger, Ways of Telling; two collections of essays, Anglo-English Attitudes and Working the Room; and many genre-defying books: But Beautiful, The Missing of the Somme, Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It, The Ongoing Moment, Zona, about Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker, Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H W Bush and White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World. He ...
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