The Grass Arena
An Autobiography
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4.6 • 20 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind.
In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when begging carried an automatic three-year prison sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled the parks and streets in search of drink or prey. When not united in their common aim of acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered one another over prostitutes or a bottle, or the begging of money. Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison.
'Sober and precise, grotesque, violent, sad, charming and hilarious all at once'
Literary Review
'Beside it, a book like Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London seems a rather inaccurate tourist guide'
Colin MacCabe
Customer Reviews
Absolutely gripping from page 1!!
A tribute to lifers on the streets. A hard upbringing and an even harder kind in later years. You will not be able to put this down. It reads so well and is the most concise account of street life in the days of sleeping in cars on the harsh streets of London Town.
The Grass Arena
I bought this book after watching a documentary on John Healy and was completely drawn into his story. The book is as compelling as it is shocking in parts. However, he tells his story with no self-pity and no attempt to elicit sympathy from the reader. It is an almost clinical account of life, literally, in the gutter. Similarly, his redemption (via chess, of all things) is recounted with no sense of triumph or fanfare - it simply is want it is.
Read this book.
Meanwhile, I'm off to search for a sequel.