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A review by holatortuga
Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
4.0
“As I stood, waiting over the lavatory, I heard a church bell peal in the frosty night, in some other part of the city. Cold and lonely it sounded, like the dreariest noise that ever defiled the ear of man. If you could call it a noise. It made misery mark time”.
I don’t really know where to put this, truthfully it’s more like a 3.5 than a 4 but given it’s Behan’s 100th anniversary this year, I’ll round it up. Ar son na cúise, mar a deirtear.
I came in with high expectations for this story of Behan’s arrest at 16 and subsequent imprisonment in jail and, of course, Borstal. The opening nod the journey from confinement to confinement had me hooked initially. The unfolding of the locations and procedures, so unfamiliar to the narrator, really evoked a sense of powerlessness against a hostile English machine. I enjoyed these early sections the most. The fact that it was something of a battle for survival made Behan’s emerging friendships among the YPs that much more affecting. Not in the ‘they found friendship in the hardest circumstances’ way, more in the ‘children and teenagers will behave like children and teenagers wherever you put them’ way.
On that, I became very attached to the characters (even Joe and Knowlsey). Under the macho blustering, they truly read like teenage boys. Even through the eyes of an older Behan writing it up, the characters came off like boys trying on the costumes of workmen, husbands, murderers, thieves and so on. That’s why, I’m sorry to say, I found it harder to sympathise with Behan himself throughout - god forgive me. As his sentence goes on, his skill as a liar only increases. What the other Borstal boys consider Irish ‘blarney’, I read as a cunning means of survival. It was disturbing. He just seemed blue to say anything to get by, which had me questioning the friendships which so moved me initially. The latent politics of the book (Ken’s class isolation, Tom’s forced conception of ‘socialism’, the ‘dead’ repression of the Irish, and so on) were interesting but not as sharp as I expected. I say this of Behan the character in his book, not Behan the real man.
Borstal Boy has been the first book to make me laugh out loud while reading in a long time. More for the odd turn of phrase or aside than anything else. Like early on when he talks about the pigeons grunting on the windowsills, or the ‘Haw old boy’ accent of the priest. Those were the parts where it really came alive, like you were hearing the story rather than reading it. It dragged on a bit but what can you expect from a book describing a carceral environment. It was interesting that I found fewer really remarkable bits of writing in the latter part of the book, when the pace of Behan’s imprisonment began to slow slow slow. I keep trying to convince myself that the drop off in detail at the very end, and sudden ending, was evocative of being set free after so long unfree. It just happened. And maybe he didn’t care as much after his chinas were gone.
All in all, a funny page-turner, but not as strong or hard-hitting as I had expected. Read it on the beach so you can pop in for a swim in the sea in Behan’s honour.
I don’t really know where to put this, truthfully it’s more like a 3.5 than a 4 but given it’s Behan’s 100th anniversary this year, I’ll round it up. Ar son na cúise, mar a deirtear.
I came in with high expectations for this story of Behan’s arrest at 16 and subsequent imprisonment in jail and, of course, Borstal. The opening nod the journey from confinement to confinement had me hooked initially. The unfolding of the locations and procedures, so unfamiliar to the narrator, really evoked a sense of powerlessness against a hostile English machine. I enjoyed these early sections the most. The fact that it was something of a battle for survival made Behan’s emerging friendships among the YPs that much more affecting. Not in the ‘they found friendship in the hardest circumstances’ way, more in the ‘children and teenagers will behave like children and teenagers wherever you put them’ way.
On that, I became very attached to the characters (even Joe and Knowlsey). Under the macho blustering, they truly read like teenage boys. Even through the eyes of an older Behan writing it up, the characters came off like boys trying on the costumes of workmen, husbands, murderers, thieves and so on. That’s why, I’m sorry to say, I found it harder to sympathise with Behan himself throughout - god forgive me. As his sentence goes on, his skill as a liar only increases. What the other Borstal boys consider Irish ‘blarney’, I read as a cunning means of survival. It was disturbing. He just seemed blue to say anything to get by, which had me questioning the friendships which so moved me initially. The latent politics of the book (Ken’s class isolation, Tom’s forced conception of ‘socialism’, the ‘dead’ repression of the Irish, and so on) were interesting but not as sharp as I expected. I say this of Behan the character in his book, not Behan the real man.
Borstal Boy has been the first book to make me laugh out loud while reading in a long time. More for the odd turn of phrase or aside than anything else. Like early on when he talks about the pigeons grunting on the windowsills, or the ‘Haw old boy’ accent of the priest. Those were the parts where it really came alive, like you were hearing the story rather than reading it. It dragged on a bit but what can you expect from a book describing a carceral environment. It was interesting that I found fewer really remarkable bits of writing in the latter part of the book, when the pace of Behan’s imprisonment began to slow slow slow. I keep trying to convince myself that the drop off in detail at the very end, and sudden ending, was evocative of being set free after so long unfree. It just happened. And maybe he didn’t care as much after his chinas were gone.
All in all, a funny page-turner, but not as strong or hard-hitting as I had expected. Read it on the beach so you can pop in for a swim in the sea in Behan’s honour.