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You’re twelve years old. Your mother’s a junkie and your father might as well be dead. You can’t read or write, and you don’t go to school. An average day means sitting round a bonfire with your mates smoking drugs, or stealing cars. Welcome to Urban’s world. Bernard Hare was on society’s margins, living on one of Leeds’ roughest estates and with a liking for drink and drugs. So he knew what life in the underclass was like in ’90s Britain. But even he was shocked when he met Urban, an illiterate, glue-sniffing twelve-year-old. And through Urban he got to know the Shed Crew – an anarchic gang of kids between the ages of ten and fourteen; joy-riding, thieving runaways, who were no strangers to drugs or sex. Nearly all had been in care, but few adults really cared. Bernard decided to do what he could. He didn’t know what he was letting himself in for.
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Reviews
A dark and bitterly funny window on to a part of British life that most would rather sweep under the carpet . . . both inspiring and uplifting.
Hare writes with laconic self-deprecation, black humour and a humane, ever present sense of railing against the system that failed Urban and his gang . . . exceptional
'Don't miss Bernard Hare's astonishing account of his relationship with Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew'
'It reads like a novel - a gripping, vivid, deeply affecting piece of work'
A compelling piece of ethnography, but it is also a deeply personal memoir . . . Moving but never sanctimonious, it is another City of God, this time for Britain rather than Brazil.
'As a record of contemporary Britain, it is searing...Hare is never sensationalist, sentimental, judgemental or self-regarding'
A damnation of British society that is both violently shocking and laugh-out-loud funny, reading somewhere between a pre-teen Trainspotting and a northern-English equivalent of Larry Clark's Kids . . . a memoir with attitude
A cross between a grim fairytale and a reflective, brazen anecdote . . . a marvellous read.
An extraordinary account of the parallel world of missing children who live under our noses in every inner city, but officially don't exist.
This is writing from the edge. Bernie Hare is a truly original voice. He deserves to be big - really big!
Unexpectedly powerful.