Boadicea's Chariot

When I read about a novel short-listed for some Guardian prize or other that was about Aberdeen, I asked my local library to get it for me.  Now that I’ve read it, I can safely say that only the first few chapters are actually about Aberdeen.  It is in fact about the life of a child, born in the Granite City, brought up by a mother living on benefits.

Tony Hogan bought me an Icecream-float before he stole my Ma by Kerry Hudson is about the child’s life, seen through her eyes from her birth.  We learn that mother had moved to London, found a job but had been seduced by a married American.  Pregnant she returned home to Aberdeen and ended up living on benefits, cigarettes, vodka and drugs.  The Tony Hogan of the title is a bad lad, a vicious, violent drug dealer who takes advantage of mother’s council flat to move in ( there’s a novelty!) and then starts abusing her, though thankfully not the child.  Mother and child head back to London – and that’s the end of Aberdeen’s role in the book – to find father.  What they find is father’s wife, who has no idea where the philanderer is but offers them shelter and comfort for a couple of days.  Mother then moves self and daughter to Canterbury where she meets another man.  Then back to Scotland, this time Airdrie and Coatbridge, then on to Yarmouth.  The daughter finally makes it back to London, hoping for help from her stepmother.

The language is appalling and very tedious through repetition and the whole thing is totally depressing and at the same time annoying.  Always a shortage of money, moonlight flits with the landlord’s furniture, yet vodka and cigarettes.  I’m sure it is supposed to be a “scathing indictment” or some such of our society, but for me it is simply a damning piece of evidence that benefits do not in fact benefit the recipients.  Mother falls out with her own mother just after the baby’s birth – Grandma having had the temerity to suggest that she’ll have to find a job – and then relies totally on benefits, wherever she is. The child’s life might not have been much better if they had been forced to stay with Grandma, but it couldn’t have been much worse.  Schools seem full of undisciplined children, swallowing every drug they can find, and one can already see the next batch of unemployable young adults getting ready to hold out their begging bowls.