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Caveat lector
Jul. 15th, 2018 04:12 pmBook Review: Don't Let My Past Be Your Future, by Harry Leslie Smith
I'd already added this to my to-read list when it turned up in the work book sale. I was curious, though I'd been warned that if you're a regular reader of his writing in The Guardian you may find there's only a single theme that gets repeated ad infinitum.
That flaw is, to some extent, true. It often reads as though everything can be blamed on the austerity of British governments in the 1920s and 1930s, which just seems to lack imagination. Smith's childhood was not short on tragedy, losing a sibling to tuberculosis, watching a parental relationship fall apart due ultimately to workplace injury, and frequently moving on in order to avoid landlords and bailiffs. In some ways this might have been a better book if Smith stuck solely to the facts, because he tells his harrowing early life story well and it is a story worth hearing, but he can't resist returning to a one-dimensional layer of cause and effect. I'm not disputing that government policy bears some responsibility, but there is an over-emphasis on that single cause, because it fits Smith's agenda to complain about austerity today, which again may be causing much damage, but is not the sole driver of everything.
Smith lauds Corbyn on several occasions in the book. Smith is also vehemently anti-Brexit. Curiously these two positions never seem to be in conflict, which seems stereotypical and for me poses challenges of credibility.
I'd already added this to my to-read list when it turned up in the work book sale. I was curious, though I'd been warned that if you're a regular reader of his writing in The Guardian you may find there's only a single theme that gets repeated ad infinitum.
That flaw is, to some extent, true. It often reads as though everything can be blamed on the austerity of British governments in the 1920s and 1930s, which just seems to lack imagination. Smith's childhood was not short on tragedy, losing a sibling to tuberculosis, watching a parental relationship fall apart due ultimately to workplace injury, and frequently moving on in order to avoid landlords and bailiffs. In some ways this might have been a better book if Smith stuck solely to the facts, because he tells his harrowing early life story well and it is a story worth hearing, but he can't resist returning to a one-dimensional layer of cause and effect. I'm not disputing that government policy bears some responsibility, but there is an over-emphasis on that single cause, because it fits Smith's agenda to complain about austerity today, which again may be causing much damage, but is not the sole driver of everything.
Smith lauds Corbyn on several occasions in the book. Smith is also vehemently anti-Brexit. Curiously these two positions never seem to be in conflict, which seems stereotypical and for me poses challenges of credibility.