Readers of Geoff Dyer’s books have come to expect his trademark humor but also his incisive cultural commentary.
Now, with his latest work of nonfiction, Homework: A Memoir, we have a book that is more fully focused on Geoff Dyer himself—his story, his childhood, family, and home—and what he experienced growing up English in the 1960s and ‘70s.
We learn about the paths that led Dyer to his love of literature and his penchant for excelling in his examinations in school.
So many wins lead to losses, too, as Dyer diverges from the life his mother (a dinner lady) and father (a sheet-metal worker) had always known.
We learn about Dyer’s tribulations of teenage sports, romances, fights and other adventures.
While Dyer was growing up and changing, so was England.
The memoir Homework takes us to the threshold of university where Dyer even more acutely feels the distance from his humble beginnings.
In Homework, Dyer reveals that the more success he had in school, the further he drifted from his parents.
However, his telling of this story brings us up close to see plainly his profound love for his family and an appreciation of his past.
