Good story

The story explores the issue of abandonment and the awful experience of being a black boy fostered in the 1960s and how continues to affect the life of the protagonist. It also explores reconciliation.
The narration is very poor.,The accents are all wrong and pronunciation of Jamaican words such as facety are irritatingly incorrect. It’s still worth the listen.

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Realistic story

Alex Wheatle has written a realistic story giving an insight into the tough lives of young black men in the care system. It is a well written story with a good climax, which made me really anxious wondering how it would all end. Really enjoyable and worth the read.
The narrator was disappointing. He was not able to do justice to the Jamaican characters accents. His pronunciation of words such as youth, facety and names such as Sugar Minot was terrible. He should have done the research. This affected my enjoyment.

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Clichéd

At best you can call this a story of it's time. Published in 1999, looking back to 1980, but here I am listening to this in 2024 and it just seems so clichéd. It's in keeping with those films like Babymother of the late 90's: written for scandal and sensationalism. Add a soundtrack and you have the basis of a screenplay for a low budget film.
The Audible narration is laughable and just lazy. Numerous examples of poor expression which makes you have to rewind to check you heard it correctly. "Ghetto youth" pronounced "Yowt" instead of "Yute", "Facety" pronounced "Fassetty" instead of "Face-tee". Someone needed to have reviewed this before it went public.
It's a shame because there's a story there. I'm prepared to read other works by this author but I feel that 24+ years on, the quality of writing is of a higher standard, but hey, what do I know.

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Poor narration

yout is pronounced yute
facety is pronounced face tee

There were loads more that I couldn't even work out they were so badly pronounced. Please find someone who understands British jamaican youth culture to narrate these books. This really spoilt the experience for me.

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1 person found this helpful

OMFG!!!

Would you try another book written by Alex Wheatle or narrated by Joel Trill?

Yes I tried the sequel and that was much better. But I would not try anything by the narrator!

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

The story itself was ok but what ruined it for me was the narrator, who does not seem to have even heard West Indian people in south London speak before! He could not pronounce even the simplest words or phrases, be them Jamaican patois or London slang. It really was very painful and torturous to listen to, especially as a person who grew up around that area around that time. I really don't know how he got paid for that job or how the publishers let such an awful performance be published in their name!

What didn’t you like about Joel Trill’s performance?

It was dire! He sounded like a middle class out-of-London actor who really does not have a clue how to act!!!

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

The story sparked nuff nostalgia. However, the narration made me extremely angry due to its very poor performance.

Any additional comments?

I should've been paid to listen to this book!!!!

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4 people found this helpful

Terrible narrator.

The book itself is one of my favourites I've ever read, (paperback version). But this is the WORST possible narrator they could have chosen for the audio version.

The whole voice, tone, and even the way you can it's someone from a completely different race/culture and begging, try but failing so miserably in attempting to do the accent of a black man from South London. even the way they try to speak Jamaican (patois) is shockingly bad.

it's literally so terrible it's not possible to listen to this. It's extremely uncomfortable. I grew up and still live exactly the same place and in thee same culture of the setting of this book. and the narrator for me, just seemed liked "appropriation".

This narrator has no grasp of the culture, or how to speak or pronounce any of the words he was using.

And it's ashame, because the author Alex Wheatle (who is not the narrator) is an amazing writer. And this person ruined this book for me forever.

if you're really interested in this book, I'd suggest buying the paperback version, you'll enjoy it more.

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