The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness: A Memoir - Hardcover

Caveney, Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1501165968 ISBN 13: 9781501165962

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2018

Synopsis

An enthralling, emotional memoir that recounts the ups and downs of coming-of-age, set against the music and literature of the 1970s.

Raised in a small town in the north of England known primarily for its cotton mills, football team, and its deep roots in the "Respectable Working Class," Graham Caveney armed himself against the confusing nature of adolescence with a thick accent, a copy of Kafka, and a record collection including the likes of the Buzzcocks and Joy Division. All three provided him the opportunity to escape, even if just in mind, beyond his small-town borders. But, when those passions are noticed and preyed upon by a mentor, everything changes.

Now, as an adult, Caveney attempts to reconcile his past and present, coming to grips with both the challenges and wonder of adolescence, music, and literature. By turns angry, despairing, beautifully written, shockingly funny, and ultimately redemptive, The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness is a tribute to the power of the arts--and a startling, original memoir that "feels as if it had to be written, and demands to be read" (The Guardian UK).

About this title

Review

"Heartbreaking and brilliant, yet still fun to read." --Tama Janowitz, author of Scream and Slaves of New York

"Graham Caveney's enthralling memoir is, in part, about the ambiguous virtues of social mobility... But this book is also about something else that hugely enriches it while deeply unsettling the reader... A gripping read... Despite its subject, this is not a depressing book. It is often bleakly funny and, alongside its troubling main theme, tells a more tender story of adolescent male friendship, unspoken parental love and music's redemptive power... [Caveney's] voice on the page is humane, big-hearted and without self-pity... His story... feels as if it had to be written, and it demands to be read." --The Guardian

"What Caveney achieves in this powerful, distinctive memoir is the positioning of his repeated sexual abuse into the landscape of an early Eighties adolescence . . . By turns honest, angry, funny, thoughtful, acerbic and desperately sad . . . Caveney impressively resists reaching easy conclusions . . . The book is percussive with black gags, as Caveney attacks the contradictions of his teenage years." -Richard Beard, The Times

"A defiant, important memoir . . . Graham Caveney recounts with great courage and candour how, in the 1970s, as the clever, awkward, nerdy, only child of devoutly Catholic working-class parents in Accrington, Lancashire, he was groomed by a priest at his local grammar school in Blackburn, and then sexually abused by him." -Observer (UK)

"Extraordinary . . . brilliantly detailed, vivid and frequently very funny . . . A remarkable feat." -Editor's Choice, The Bookseller (UK)

"Caveney writes beautifully...Ultimately, though, it is not necessarily the writing but the raw emotion that remains with the reader, that and the hope for another volume of memoirs as memorable as this one." --Booklist (starred review)

"The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness is a fascinating book, a hilarious book and a horrifying one. On the surface it is a vivid, funny memoir of growing up in 1970s Lancashire; a wry treatise on the British class system; a hymn to traditions, rituals, ways of life and habits of thought which are already sliding into oblivion. At its core, however, lies something darker, much harder to talk about, and profoundly disturbing. It's a book which blew me away and shook me to the core." --Jonathan Coe, author of Number 11

"A powerful, distinct memoir. . . [The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness] insists that Graham Caveney is here, and that his story is important and that it matters. His open-eyed honesty does himself and his past the justice he was denied at the time." -The Times (UK)

"Caveney . . . writes with such robust, defiant attack that he never leaves the reader feeling like a prurient spy. His anger is blistering, any comedy not so much black as bile green . . . Caveney tells the story of his life brilliantly.... you wish there was another one he could have written." -Sunday Times (UK)

"Compelling, visceral, and at times very funny, The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness is more than a memoir of abuse in the hands of a seductive and manipulative priest and revered mentor. It's an unflinching and yet generous portrait of his working-class Irish family blindly under the spell of the Catholic Church."--Catherine Texier, author of Breakup: The End of a Love Story

About the Author

Graham Caveney has worked as a journalist, academic, and critic. Publications he has contributed to include NME, Q, Blitz and City Limits. He is the author of a memoir, The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness; 'The Priest' They Called Him, a monograph on William Burroughs; Screaming with Joy, a monograph on Allen Ginsberg; and, with Elizabeth Young, of Shopping in Space: Essays on American 'Blank Generation' Fiction. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1501165968
• ISBN 13: 9781501165962
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 259