Homework
A portrait of a young boy, who keeps passing exams—and of a changing England in the 1960s and 1970s.
The only child of a sheet-metal worker and a dinner lady who worked at the canteen of the local school, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of the Depression and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, this loving memoir is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the postwar settlement, of which the author was an unconscious beneficiary. The crux comes at the age of eleven with the exam that decided the future of generations of British schoolkids: secondary modern or the transformative possibilities of grammar school? One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to grammar school, where he develops a love of literature (and beer and prog rock).
Mapping a path from primary school through the tribulations of teenage sport, gig-going, romantic fumblings, fights (well, getting punched in the face), and other misadventures with comic affection, Homework takes us to the threshold of university, where Dyer gets the first intimations that a short geographical journey—just forty miles—might extend to the length of a life.
Recalling an eroded but strangely resilient England, Homework traces, in perfectly phrased and hilarious detail, roots that extend into the deep foundations of class society.
Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer is the award-winning author of many books, including The Last Days of Roger Federer, Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, Zona, See/Saw, and the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism). A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dyer lives in Los Angeles, where he is a writer in residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.