Stuart : A Life Backwards

Synopsis: Stuart, A Life Backwards, is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator ('a middle class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander') and a chaotic, knife-wielding beggar whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison. Interwoven into this is Stuart's confession: the story of his life, told backwards. With humour, compassion (and exasperation) Masters slowly works back through post-office heists, prison riots and the exact day Stuart discovered violence, to unfold the reasons why he changed from a happy-go-lucky little boy into a polydrug-addicted-alcoholic Jekyll and Hyde personality, with a fondness for what he called 'little strips of silver' (knives to you and me). Funny, despairing, brilliantly written and full of surprises: this is the most original and moving biography of recent years.

Review: Alexander first met Stuart when he saw him sitting in a doorway on the streets of Cambridge ... 'pasty skin, green bomber jacket, broken gym shoes, hair cropped to the scalp and a week's worth of stubble; his face, the left side livelier than the right, was almost mongoloid. Several of his teeth were missing; his mouth was a sluice.' He says something which Alexander has to get down on his knee's to hear ... he whispers 'as soon as I get the opportunity I'm going to top myself.' He meets him again when they come together to campaign against the wrongful conviction of two charity workers and it's not long before Alexander realises he has found the perfect person to interview for his book about the homeless.

But Stuart's not at all happy with the first manuscript, apparently it's 'b****cks boring.' Put briefly, his objection is that Alexander drones on. Stuart wants jokes, anecdotes yarns and humour, he doesn't want academic quotes and background research ... 'Nah Alexander, you gotta start again. You gotta do better than this.' Apparently he's after a bestseller 'like what Tom Clancy writes ... something that people will read .. make it a murder mystery ... what murdered the boy I was? See? write it backwards.' So Alexander begins again and writes the book that I've just read. The first bombshell comes soon and gives you a bit of a shake even though it seems inevitable. On the bottom of page six Alexander writes ...


click here to continue review - possible spoilers

'I wish I could have done it more quickly, I wish I could have presented it to Stuart before he stepped in front of the 11.15 London to King's Lynn train.'

Stuart is the sort of anti-social nightmare that, apart from possibly throwing some coins his way, you'd probably avoid in the street if you saw him. A man who until recently had been living out of skips, who has twenty pages of convictions, a thief, hostage taker, psycho, drug addict and solvent abuser, self harmer, street raconteur with violent tendencies and a love of knives, really, you could name almost anything crime/vice-wise and Stuart has probably done it. But what were the reasons for it, what turned him from the 'happy-go lucky little boy' of his mum's description to the disruptive, violent and withdrawn individual that he grew up to be.

And the answers are all here, not immediately apparent although hinted at as Stuart recalls his earlier days. At first of course, we start with the here and now so the story is quite encouraging, Stuart is off the streets and living in his own one-roomed flat and he's on a methadone programme (there's even a recipe here for the 'convict curry' he cooks for Alexander during one of their early sessions.) but soon come the years he has spent in and out of prison and living rough and this obviously is when most of Stuart's crimes were committed and as the years strip away we learn more and more about his adolescence and childhood and what we learn there is truly harrowing. Stuart himself has a hard time recalling any of this stuff and indeed can't talk about a lot of it but there is enough here to make you hang your head .. I read it with tears dripping down my face.

This is not just a story about Stuart though but homeless people in general, what it's like to live rough on the streets, what sort of people become homeless and the difficulties of being alienated from the community and although it is relentlessly depressing, thanks to Alexander's great writing (and illustrations) and Stuart's great quotes, there's a lot of humour in it too. I don't want to go into too much detail because, if you are in any way interested, YOU REALLY MUST READ IT. But I must just warn first, some people may find the content offensive.

Mark Haddon in the book blurb thinks this is 'possibly the best biography I have ever read' and who am I to disagree with him.