Unconditional refusal

That the boy depicted in Shannon Burns’s nightmarish memoir survived to write it at the age of forty reflects no credit on society or on those around him. His persistence seems remarkable, given the world he entered.

The boy is always referred to thus. Page after page, we learn the extent of his grievous upbringing. His parents – mismatched and poorly educated – stay together for the first two years of his life, then he is alone with his erratic Greek mother, who drinks too much and becomes addicted to prescription pills. One of the boy’s earliest memories is of waking on a concrete floor, blood dripping from his nose, having been beaten by his mother. He is four or five years old. ‘I don’t resent the slaps or scratches. It’s ordinary, untroubling. It is what mothers do to their sons whom they love.’ Meanwhile, his Greek grandfather endures him ‘without too much distaste’ (everything is qualified in this world). No one in the boy’s family has a job. Most of them are on social security and live in public housing.