Book Review: The Blocks by Karl Parkinson

Few books made me feel like this one did. I absorbed every word, every moment, every chapter of this unflinchingly, violently visceral journey. I smiled, laughed, cried and found myself re-reading the same paragraph over and over again in awe, immersed in the slangy dialogues I could almost hear in my head.

Karl Parkinson/Kenny Thompson is the storyteller we gradually get to know, taking us on a guided urban tour around O'Devaney Gardens (and a few more locations I won't disclose), just down the road from my place, where he spent his bleak yet imaginative childhood and teenage years, somehow managing to escape a dreary fate and inspiring us all to step forward and never look back. You see, I too grew up in the blocks, only in Portugal instead. No goals, no future, no dreams, no hope (which this book restored). I recognised a few voices from this realm of lost souls and doomed shadows, some characters were strangely familiar.

With raw and intimate honesty, this harsh odissey shakes one to the core (I speak for myself). This book is a memorable urban fable embellished with lyrical wit; a tragicomedy written in Northside Dub dialect, an inspiring inner-city banshee tale, gloriously gutwrenching and bittersweetly heartbreaking, where a very tormented truth triumphs through love, friendship, family, freedom and survival. Stories of self-destruction, doom and gloom, addiction, death, misery, unemployment and loss collide with love letters to music, poetry, Literature, Dublin and life itself - there's a very distinct Trainspotting-esque "Choose Life" message at some point. Anti-heroes coexist with unreal creatures in this trippy battle of contrasts. The narrative incorporates a memory lane-worthy soundtrack, including Liam and Noel Gallagher's voice and lyrics as the gospel of a generation, Bob Marley as a music God of the blocks, Michael Jackson and Madonna before a night out, The Pogues and UB40's while drinking tea and getting high on whatever was available.

Reading this book was a ravishing sensorial experience, a one-way ticket to Kenny's universe. I could smell the cheap batter burgers, the greasy fry ups, the stale beer, the smoke, the sweat. Petrichor and prostitute's perfume. I could listen to Britpop tunes and Garda sirens and loud slagging. The atmospheric portrayal of The Blocks haunts the reader and the author's peculiar turn of phrase steals the show.

Karl Parkinson, you neo-Beat poet from the Blocks, thanks for letting us readers enter your elegiac galaxy and witness your epic antics. Your words will live forever in places we pass by - Drumalee, Infirmary Road, Parkgate Street, Fatima, Phoenix Park. This book has stayed with me - the words, the sounds, the voices of the blocks will forever echo with the demolishing power of an anthem for the working class, the unheard, the misunderstood and the unprivileged. Not every dead end means game over.