1983

Thanks to Unbound and Netgalley for this digital ARC of Tom Cox's '1983.'

This is a wonderful and magical book and a little hard to encapsulate without spoiling the story.

Set mainly in 1983 (hence the title!) in the depths of the Thatcherite era in Britain, the action centers around Benji, a precocious and boisterous eight-year-old boy, his progressive, left-leaning family, friends, school, and neighbors. They live in a small, and thanks to Thatcher, soon to be ex-mining village in Nottinghamshire in the middle of England and deal with the realities of life in a country where Thatcher's policies are crushing their way of life.

Benji has imagination to spare but not all of his imaginings are so far wide of the mark.

This is so well written, from capturing the mind and wonderings of a child, to his descriptions of the times, his loving description of his parents' relationship, and the other adults that come into his universe. If I was a note taker I'd have spent twice as long reading this book since I'd have been recording superb language and ideas on just about every page.

Although its subject matter is quite different, reading this book reminded me of the feelings and emotions engendered when reading Max Porter's 'Lanny' - just a beautiful written and evocative book.

I'm away off now to find Tom Cox's 'Villager.'

Not actually a belated prequel to Orwell's 1984, but a novel of childhood set in a rural mining community on the eve of the Miner's Strike. Author Tom Cox clearly has an excellent memory and the experiences of his hero, Benjy, a narrator who was born in 1975 and was thus seven and eight in the year 1983 will resonate with many people especially those like me who were born around the same time, in my case, a year later. A story of a way of life which is at the same time both ordinary and magical, this sheds light on the life of Benjy, a boy who worries that he is being attacked by aliens and the world around him.

There’s something magical about the way this is written. It’s not quite stream of consciousness but almost stream of a sense of a time. The author has captured 1983 and put it in a book, with different perspectives of the people in Benjy’s life, drawing out the hope and the hopelessness of the time. At times very funny, it seems a very real reflection of the period and the feelings and experiences of a little kid in England in 1983. I really enjoyed it, although find it very hard to describe why.

This fictional reminiscence of an eight year old boy in 1983 defies categorisation and is all the more effective for it. It’s like an oral history where the whole work is more than the individual stories. Some realistic and supported by photographs from the author’s past, some fantastic (in all senses), this felt like an immersive as well as a reading experience. Remarkable.