Wednesday, November 9, 2016

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.

3 comments:

  1. Another person I know has sang high praises about this book, and this is making me so curious. She even said one of the characters reminded her a lot of someone we once knew back in Manchester, and that has spiked my curiosity even more!! Even though I come from a "priviledged" background, I remember very well what it was like for kids who lived in the blocks here close to my childhood home - we all went to the same school, and as strange as it may sound, there were the obvious cases of "never gonna amount to nothing" but there were also a lot of kids we knew straight away would do good in life, would get somewhere, would not get lost. And in the realm of the privileged kids there were quite a few who kicked it and ended up in the blocks themselves before they saw the dead end that for them meant game over...
    https://bloglairdutemps.blogspot.pt/

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  2. Deve ser de interessante leitura, contudo decerto eu não iria entender "the slangy dialogues". :-)
    xx

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  3. Deve ser de interessante leitura, contudo decerto eu não iria entender "the slangy dialogues". :-)
    xx

    ReplyDelete