This book by Allan Ahlberg is a mixed bag. It's an autobiographical look through rose-tinted age-fogged glasses at the author's own childhood, in 1940's/50's Oldbury in the Black Country - and for a Millennial reader like myself, the sheer distance between his childhood and the contemporary average is mind-boggling, but I pride myself on being feral enough that despite being born in the 1990's my own youth bears many hallmarks of similarity to what is presented in this book. We meet a young Allan who hates baths, loves hiding under the table, dart, playing football, alternately squashing and empathizing with snails, playing with things that aren't even technically toys but can become such through active imagination, etc.
I'm not really sure who this book's meant to be for. Ahlberg is a masterful and prolific kids' author and this claims to be his first book intended for adults, but other than nostalgic curiousity for the inner life and memories of a similarly-aged person, I'm struggling to think why exactly an adult reader would read this off their own bat. It would be a fantastic book to read to younger readers to give them a sense of how much lifestyles, attitudes and such can change in a short fifty year generation or so - but in my opinion it just wasn't entertaining enough on its own merit to warrant picking up and reading as a grown-up. Unless you really like terse poetry, rambling anecdotes about half-forgotten things, and of course buckets and buckets of Brummie good cheer.
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