Homework

The first memoir from Geoff Dyer, author of Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, recollecting his childhood and coming of age in postwar Britain 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. It was a time of Airfix models, wargames, conkers and frugality: Geoff's father splurges on a mono record player - before imposing a blockade on buying records. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded to Dyer's generation. A grammar-school education leads to books, prog rock (on a new stereo), girls, beer and, eventually, a place at Oxford. He would go on to embrace a life his parents could barely recognise. In Homework, Dyer returns to the source and asks what it means to live through an era of complex social transformation.