Bageye at the Wheel by Colin Grant
To his fellow West Indians who assemble every weekend for the all-night poker game at Mrs Knight's, he is always known as Bageye. There aren't very many black men in Luton in 1972 and most of them gather at Mrs Knight's - Summer Wear, Pioneer, Anxious, Tidy Boots - each has his nickname. Bageye already finds it a struggle to feed his family on his wage from Vauxhall Motors, but now his wife Blossom has set her heart on her sons going to private school. In this wonderful memoir Colin Grant looks at his father through the eyes of his ten-year-old self. Colin is Bageye's favourite 'pickney', and often his reluctant companion in his latest attempt to placate Blossom with another DIY project, or a little cash. When he acquires a less than roadworthy old car, Bageye sets himself up as an unofficial minicab service, lack of a driving licence notwithstanding. More profitable are his marijuana deals, until the day he mistakenly entrusts Colin with choosing a hiding place for a huge bag of ganja...
The book is a classic of its kind, in my opinion; if I were Bageye, I would be immensely proud of it* Sunday Telegraph *
He has a great ear for Bageye’s patois-heavy dialect and offers detailed accounts of his father’s simultaneously bathetic and bizarre escapades in which a young, unwilling Grant is sucked into a world of gambling, marijuana, ceiling tiles and unlicensed cabs. -- Daragh Reddin * Metro *
Grant’s memoir is the latest in a long series of accounts of immigration from the West Indies… As for Grant’s addition to this genre, I must jettison any claims to cool by confessing that I loved every word of it. -- Peter Carty * Independent *
What a fabulous example of storytelling this book is... The authorial voice might be in that fashionable nine to eleven-year old bracket, but it has the rarer psychological insight of a writer remembering himself as a child. -- Keith Bruce * Herald Scotland *
Bageye at the Wheel is a wonderfulyl amusing and insightful account of a young Jamaican boy growing up in Luton * Luton News *
He has a great ear for Bageye’s patois-heavy dialect and offers detailed accounts of his father’s simultaneously bathetic and bizarre escapades in which a young, unwilling Grant is sucked into a world of gambling, marijuana, ceiling tiles and unlicensed cabs. -- Daragh Reddin * Metro *
Grant’s memoir is the latest in a long series of accounts of immigration from the West Indies… As for Grant’s addition to this genre, I must jettison any claims to cool by confessing that I loved every word of it. -- Peter Carty * Independent *
What a fabulous example of storytelling this book is... The authorial voice might be in that fashionable nine to eleven-year old bracket, but it has the rarer psychological insight of a writer remembering himself as a child. -- Keith Bruce * Herald Scotland *
Bageye at the Wheel is a wonderfulyl amusing and insightful account of a young Jamaican boy growing up in Luton * Luton News *
Colin Grant is a historian and author of four highly praised books: Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey (2008), I and I: The Natural Mystics Marley, Tosh and Wailer (2011), Bageye at the Wheel (2012), and A Smell of Burning (2016). He is an Associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies, and teaches creative non-fiction writing, most recently for Arvon and Sierra Nevada College.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224091053 |
| ISBN 10 | 0224091050 |
| Title | Bageye at the Wheel |
| Author | Colin Grant |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2012-04-05 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for PEN/Ackerley Prize 2013 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |