Homework by Geoff Dyer
'Geoff Dyer['s] voice is unmistakable' Guardian
'Intellectually playful and Stylistically distinctive' Spectator
'Moving, atmospheric, trutheful, perceptive and hilariously funny' TESSA HADLEY
'Perfect' The Times
Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the post-war settlement.
It captures his time at primary school - discovering the tactile delights of Airfix, the combative seasons of conkers and plagues of verrucas at the local swimming baths. Then, at eleven, comes the crux, the exam that decided the future of generations of British school kids: splitting them between secondary modern and grammar schools. One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to Cheltenham Grammar School to face the tribulations of teenage life - sport, gig-going, romantic fumblings, fights (well, getting punched in the face) - and other misadventures a place where he develops a love of literature (and beer and prog rock). At the threshold of university, Dyer gets his first intimations that a short geographical journey - just forty miles up the A40 - might drastically change the trajectory of his life.
Recalling an eroded but strangely resilient England, Homework traces roots that extend into the deep foundations of class society. Dyer carries us back, with characteristic comic affection, to the joys and lingering questions of every childhood, and asks what it means to live through an era of intense transformation.
Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny - I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story -- TESSA HADLEY
Geoff Dyer and I nearly share a name and a birth year. We were born in different countries, however, under different circumstances. No matter. Every page of this exquisite, witty memoir brought back a flood of memories and emotions that seemed to be my own, so lovingly and precisely does Dyer articulate them. A heartfelt book by a supremely intelligent writer -- JEFFREY EUGENIDES
A jacuzzi of a book: soothing and fizzing at the same time -- JOAN BAKEWELL
This acutely observed memoir of postwar England might be the highlight of [Dyer's] illustrious four-decade career . . . This Gloucestershire lad turned boomer Proust is his own man, and he has written a highly original memoir that will provoke, amuse, beguile -- and endure * * Financial Times * *
Satisfying * * Times Literary Supplement * *
A raucous coming-of-age-memoir . . . an arresting and evocatively detailed take on family and society * * Publisher's Weekly * *
Has Geoff Dyer set aside his matchless dry wit and sly indirection to finally reveal to us the formation and workings of his inmost heart? No, better, he has employed those gifts in that cause. Homework is funny and beautiful and not homework at all -- JONATHAN LETHEM
Reading Homework is like going for a long walk with a close friend, whose singular voice-inventive, absorbing, a little rakish, and wonderfully dry-will hold your interest for hours on end. Geoff Dyer is a profoundly intelligent memoirist. His childhood emerges from these pages as both his utterly distinctive experience and the shared history of a nation -- MERVE EMRE
A wonderfully immersive portrait - observant, funny, touching - of a sixties childhood and seventies adolescence in provincial England, as Geoff Dyer takes us deep into a world only barely recognisable now -- DAVID KYNASTON
Geoff Dyer is an award-winning author of four novels and numerous non-fiction books, including Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, Zona and, most recently, The Last Days of Roger Federer. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, he has recently returned to London after ten years as Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His books have been translated into twenty-six languages.
geoffdyer.com
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781837261987 |
| ISBN 10 | 1837261989 |
| Title | Homework |
| Author | Geoff Dyer |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Canongate Books |
| Year published | 2025-05-29 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |