| Nonfiction |
Summary
Summary
Raised in a small town in the north of England known primarily for its cotton mills, football team, and its deep roots in the "Respectable Working Class," Graham Caveney armed himself against the confusing nature of adolescence with a thick accent, a copy of Kafka, and a record collection including the likes of the Buzzcocks and Joy Division. All three provided him the opportunity to escape, even if just in mind, beyond his small-town borders. But, when those passions are noticed and preyed upon by a mentor, everything changes.Now, as an adult, Caveney attempts to reconcile his past and present, coming to grips with both the challenges and wonder of adolescence, music, and literature. By turns angry, despairing, beautifully written, shockingly funny, and ultimately redemptive, The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness is a tribute to the power of the arts-and a startling, original memoir that "feels as if it had to be written, and demands to be read" (the Guardian UK).Contains mature themes.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Caveney (`The Priest¿ They Called Him) delivers a sharp, poignant memoir of anxiety and abuse. Growing up bookishly skittish in working-class 1970s northern England¿¿Writing about my working-class childhood feels like slipping on hand-me-down clothes¿¿Caveney nevertheless plots his own arc, while emboldening himself with the books of Kafka and the music of the Buzzcocks and Joy Division. The chronological plot of his youth is laid out in cinematic detail, including his mother¿s dinners of meat and mushy peas (¿food that is designed with insulation in mind¿) and his dalliances with revolutionary Marxism and capital-L Literature (¿I told her that after the revolution everyone would be a poet¿). But a shadowy fury underlies this nervous self-deprecation, borne out of his being raped as a teenager by a priest who groomed his insecurities with predatory calculation. As the memoir lurches forward in jaunts of youthful self-discovery and setbacks, Caveney writes with stabs of both fury and self-denial (¿This doesn¿t matter. It¿s not important. I¿m not even here¿) and anguished pleas to his abuser in order to make sense of it all. The result is an acidic, longing, and enraged memoir set to a postpunk soundtrack. (July)
Kirkus Review
A British journalist and critic tells the story of a working-class adolescence overshadowed by traumatic experiences with sexual abuse at the hands of a teacher.The son of northern English Catholic parents, Caveney (Screaming with Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg, 1999, etc.) was a "devout child" who didn't know he was working-class until he was in grammar school and "met people who weren't." He worked through his feelings of rejection and made friends with fellow outsiders. Together, they bonded over the music of Patti Smith, the Pretenders, and Joy Division while Caveney found personal solace in the novels of Kafka. As he grew up and became more critical of his world, he began to hate the "parochiality [and]lack of imagination" that characterized the people around him. His life changed drastically after he met "Rev. Kev," the rebel English teacher at his Catholic high school who "smoked pot'[and] was into Stevie Wonder." Drawn to Rev. Kev's culture and intelligence, Caveney regularly chatted with his teacher about books, ideas, and his hatred of the "small-souled petty-minded white working class." Their conversations led to a night out to the theater, which ended with the Rev. Kev's forcing himself on Caveney before taking him home. Unwilling to speak of that episode and of many similar ones that followed, the author kept the molestation a secret from his parents. The author ultimately broke free of his teacher's influence; but the helplessness and rage simmering just below the surface impacted almost every subsequent personal relationship he had. Even more devastatingly, it pushed the adult Caveney into "psych wards, rehabs, [and] therapists' offices" to find answers for the anguish that continued to torment him long after he left home. Despite its dark subject matter, the book is neither hopeless nor despairing thanks in large part to the author's mordant wit. Caveney seeks to understand pain and find redemption through the very act of surviving.Raw, compelling, and darkly lyrical. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Born in a small town in the north of England into what he calls the respectable working class, memoirist Caveney writes always affectingly and sometimes searingly of his childhood and adolescence, focusing on three things: first and central is his sexual abuse by his mentor, the charismatic priest known as Rev Kev, who was headmaster of his parochial school; second is his love of music, which provided a haven; and third is literature. A self-described bookish boy, he took refuge in the printed page. And, thanks to another teacher, he discovered that books were not (only) an escape from the world; they were an enrichment of it. Yet they were not enough to overcome the fallout of his adolescent abuse: his panic attacks, his becoming an alcoholic and drug addict, his suicide attempts, his agoraphobia. But these are aspects of his adult life that aside from the panic attacks are only manifested in teasing references. The focus remains on his coming-of-age and the keen insights he brings to it from his vantage of being a 50-year-old man. Through it all, Caveney writes beautifully: singer Patti Smith looked like a cross between Joan of Arc and Charlie Chaplin; I'm in love. It's terrible a bit like having stomach flu. Ultimately, though, it is not necessarily the writing but the raw emotion that remains with the reader, that and the hope for another volume of memoirs as memorable as this one.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Perhaps the most remarkable quality of this debut memoir by Caveney, author of monographs on Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, is the way in which he captures, through his prose, the feelings and experiences of a victim of sexual abuse. Here are the fragmentary memories, the disconnect from one's own body, the confusion, and the self-blame. The book starts out simply enough as a meditation on growing up bookish in working-class northern England. At the age of 14, Caveney enters a private Catholic school where he is taken under the wing of the headmaster. It quickly becomes clear what the headmaster's intentions toward Caveney are, and the inevitability of the abuse that follows is sickening to absorb. Verdict An angry and essential memoir about a topic not often discussed publicly: male victims of sexual abuse. Caveney also has a lot to say about the recuperative power of books and music.-Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
