GENERAL INFORMATION
TITLE: TONY HOGAN BOUGHT ME AN ICE CREAM FLOAT BEFORE HE STOLE MY MA
AUTHOR: KERRY HUDSON
PAGES: 366
PUBLISHER: CHATTO & WINDUS
YEAR: 2012
GENRE: GENERAL FICTION
http://kerryhudson.co.uk
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma was shortlisted for Guardian First Book Award, the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year and the Green Carnation Prize and won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award.
BLURB FROM THE COVER
When Janie Ryan is born, she’s just the latest in a long line of Ryan women, fishwives to the marrow, always ready to fight. Her violet-eyed Grandma had predicted she’d be sly, while blowing Benson and Hedges smoke rings over her Ma’s swollen belly. In the hospital, her family eyed her suspiciously, so close she could smell whether they’d had booze or food for breakfast. It was mostly booze.
Tony Hogan tells the story of a childhood of squalid Scottish council flats, screeching women, feckless men, fags and booze and drugs, the dole queue and only the very worst kinds of food. It is also the story of an irresistible, irrepressible heroine, a hilarious family you can’t help but adore the absurdities of the eighties and the fierce bonds that tie people together no matter what.
Told in an arrestingly original – and cry-out-loud funny – voice, it launches itself headlong into the middle of one of life’s great fights, between the pull of the past and the freedom of the future.
EXTRACT
‘Get out, you cunting, little fucking fucker!’ were the first words I ever heard. The midwife, a shiny-faced woman who learned entirely new turns of phrase that night, smoothed Ma’s hair.
REVIEW
I’m not a fan of long-winded titles but I really liked Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma. It fits Hudon’s crazy kaleidoscope of a first novel sort of perfectly. The title is actually what drew me to this novel in the first place.
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma is narrated in the first person by Janine Ryan. The narration is awkward at first as chapter 1 deals with Janie being born. I thought narration by a new-born baby describing her birth was a little awkward and didn’t quite work. This awkwardness only lasts a few pages and the narration finally clicks. I really liked Janie’s voice. I had a lot of sympathy for her character.
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma is one of those rate novels that packs an emotional punch on almost every page. I laughed and cried in equal measures throughout reading this, sometimes at the same time. Hudson writes about a life of poverty in a way that manages to avoid judgment and pity. Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma is one of the most honest novels I’ve ever read. Janine and her mother Iris have a rough live. Iris is on benefits and drags Janine all over the UK from bedsit to B&B and vice versa. Janine witnesses, first hand domestic violence when her mother falls for psychotic thug Tony Hogan. She witnesses her mother needing to sleep a lot. She tries to make her mother coffee in the toaster because she knows she can’t use the kettle. There are some moments in Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma that are heart-breaking and gut-wrenching. One of the stand-out scenes occurs more than three quarters of the way through when Janine’s drink is spiked and she is raped in a bar and subsequently has an abortion. My heart was in my throat. Despite living in poverty one thread that runs through Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma is hope. Janine hopes Iris won’t get back with Tony. Janine hopes she’ll make friends at her school. Janine hopes they’ll have a bit more money this time. I found myself shocked at the way Iris, Janine and later Janine’s sister Tiny lived in. Hudson shone a light on a way of life that was completely alien to me. I know people live in the conditions described in Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma, even now but I’ve never read any fiction about it. Hudson deserves a round of applause for being bold and different.
I enjoyed the first three quarters of Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma the most. Janine is dragged from pillar to post by her mother through a succession of virtually squalid flats, B&B and bed-sits. They finally settle in Great Yarmouth and the pace slows down. The tension of the earlier sections disappears and I enjoyed this part a little less.
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma deals with some pretty dark subject matter including poverty, neglect, drug addition, domestic violence, rape and alcoholism. Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma is not a dark novel. Some parts are dark but one of the main themes is love which stops Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma being depressing. Janine fiercely loves her mother despite her flaws. The loyalty and love between Iris and her flawed, junkie brother is very touching.
I thought the ending of Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma was great. Janine loves her mother and until this point her life starts to echo her mother’s to an extent. Janine does not want the same life as her mother. Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma ends on a note of hope as Janine reaches for a better, different life.
I loved Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float before He Stole My Ma. Hudson offer one of the saddest, touching and most honest portray about the harsh reality of some lives that I’ve ever read. I felt humbled as I was drawn into Janine and Iris’s life.
RATING
