Andrew Collin's book already mentioned on the forums. Highly recommended.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13498 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Publishing News
"A lovely tongue-in-cheek memoir...a wonderful antidote to all those tales of childhood woe pouring from the presses; read and enjoy"

Birmingham Evening Mail
A refreshing read . . . a thoroughly entertaining snapshot of life in the Seventies.

Glasgow Herald
A welcome visitor into any home that houses a Nick Hornby or a Tony Parsons.

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Customer Reviews

I can't review this one objectively...
,,,because I was born in the same town just 3 years later. Thus I devoured it and passed it on to my brother who found it even more evocative.

I suppose if you were born in the mid to late 60s or if you are a Northamptonian, you'll love it. If you're not, you may find it less appealing but it's warm without being sentimental and it's still a lovely account of middle England in an age that's now lost.

If you want a humorous book by another person from the same town, set later in time and with the usual London-centric view of the town, try Robert Llewellyn's 'The Man on Platform 5' (a sort of 'trading places meets queer eye' in softback)

A Normal Book for Normal People
I grew up in the Seventies not a million miles from Northampton and this book rang a lot of bells for me in many ways. The weirdest thing was recalling that we too used to call stuff we rated, 'skill' something I had totally forgotten until I read this book!

The book is a lot like life, some dull bits, some funny bits, fairly variable overall. I found it entertaining rather than compulsive and amusing rather than hilarious, but good enought to merit me bothering to find the next one to read (Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now).

And he's right. It's about time someone wrote more books about growing up normal...

A generally most enjoyable read
All in all, this is a most satisfying read, especially for anyone who was born between the mid fifties and the late sixties. In case you weren't born between these years and you're wondering, by and large it really was exactly as Andrew Collins describes "growing up normal". Nothing too outrageous happened, we lived a largely hand-to-mouth existence, nowhere near as austere as our parents' generation, but very thrifty all the same. Little pleasures mattered a lot and Collins captures this superbly. His narrative is easy to read and the passages about his grandparents are particularly sensitive and poignant. I do, however, agree with my fellow reviewer who finds the use of footnotes slightly irritating. One has to interrupt the flow of one's reading to read the footnotes. Collins could simply have given us the information concerned in the regular text.

It is somewhat disappointing to see that Collins appears, by his thirties, to have turned into the kind of "new man" that simply doesn't fit with the healthy, (dietarily and culturally) upbringing he had. Very disappointing.

His claims of being involved in the "punk scene" are also somewhat wide of the mark, as he is taking about the years of 1980-81 and buying records by groups like The Undertones and The Boomtown Rats, who were, as any true punk knows, impostors.

Great to see Collins namecheck the "Molesworth" books though.

Generally a good effort, although it is now becoming a little tiresome to read lists compiled by middle-class thirty-somethings of all their teenage girlfriends. Nick Hornby, you stand accused....