‘Tony Hogan bought me an Ice Cream Float before he Stole my Ma’ - Kerry Hudson

[bookgazing]

Today I’m talking about ‘Tony Hogan bought me an Ice Cream Float before he Stole my Ma’ by Kerry Hudson, which is one of the books on the Green Carnation Prize 2012 short list; the first UK based award for work by LGBT authors. I gathered together a group of bloggers interested in this prize, which was also created by a blogger (Simon of Savidge Reads) and over the past few days each of them has posted about one book that made the short list this year. Now it’s my turn!

I have been cavalierly promising that my contribution to this project would be a vlog review of Hudson’s novel, where you could see my face and everything (no, wait, that sounds…different than what I meant). Unfortunately I failed to put aside enough time to investigate the wonders of my laptops in-built video camera, which was a mistake as I am generally technically inept (secret - you don’t have to be technically advanced to market IT products). So instead of a vlog my contribution to the Green Carnation Prize reading group is a heap of bullet points about a book that keeps its tone as fun and frothy as the quirky zing of its lengthy title promises, while concentrating on character whose lives are hard.



1.) ‘Tony Hogan Bought me an Ice Cream before he Stole my Ma’ is a bildungsroman novel; a coming of age story which follows the main character, Janie from a young age and pays close attention to her emotional development. The novel follows Janie’s from her birth through to her mid-teens. And while there are interesting, re-occurring characters, like Janie’s Ma Iris, whose lives are depicted with care, the way the world affects Janie is the focus of this novel.

2.) The entire book is written in the first person, which means the reader is required to suspend disbelief about the limits of Janie’s knowledge, for example when she describes her birth. While the story is told by Janie as she reflects back on the events of the past and not by a growing Janie, as each event happens, it’s difficult to believe that anyone can accurately describe the circumstances of their birth or their very early life. Maybe the version of Janie who narrates the novel, gathered stories from family members, but given that she has left her family behind at the end of the novel that seems unlikely and she never mentions basing her story on reported tales. More likely she invents the early parts of her life. Or perhaps Janie is an inexplicably omniscient, first person narrator. I feel like there’s a tradition of this device being used in classic novels, but the oddness of it struck me here.

3.) Janie and Iris are extremely poor, caught in what seems like an inescapable cycle of poverty. The way this poverty forces them to move again and again drives the narrative, as they almost fall into situations and relationships which alter the course they are on. This seems like a realistic depiction of the way an individual’s random circumstances control the development of their life, no matter what they do (something which Ana talked about recently in her review of Zadie Smith’s ‘NW’).

4.) The cycle is often fueled by Iris’s decisions, for example she returns money she can’t afford to give away and follows the men in her life to destitute town after town. She willingly ignores the likely consequences of these actions, even though experience has taught her what to expect. While readers may feel she has little choice, as these men offer at least possibility, the book seems to endorse the idea that she is at least partly responsible for her family’s situation because she makes poor decisions. At times the family is in a stable financial situation, but something always goes wrong and the impetus for their new breakdown is (not always) but often due to Iris’ fantasy hopes. It’s not hard to infer that there are embedded, sad reasons behind why she makes bad choices and why it is difficult for her to escape without support, but the novel never really explicitly deals with those ideas. It never comes close to victim blaming, for example when she is beaten by the title character, Tony Hogan, nothing in the book indicates that this is her fault. Janie also makes clear that her uncle’s willful unseeing behaviour removes her Ma’s necessary support structures. At the same time, the novel does place responsibility for the family’s situation on her shoulders, while mentioning the problems she faces.

5.) Janie’s journey to escape poverty involves making decisions which directly contrast with those her mother made in the past. The different way Janie reacts to her first pregnancy (Janie has an abortion while her mother obviously kept her baby), coupled with the optimistic end of the novel, suggests that the novel feels that decisions about a child the characters will have to work extremely hard to support may be the most important factor in determining these women’s fates. If Janie’s Ma hadn't had her baby, perhaps she’d have escaped the beaten down life which makes her want to sleep so much. This seems a sensible suggestion at first glance. We all know that pregnancy, the ability to control your reproduction and poverty are linked. However, we also probably all know working class single mothers in the UK whose lives do not resemble the complete downward slide of Iris’, even though their lives are hard. So, perhaps the different way their lives develop does not rest solely on the decision they make about children.

6.) While Janie may live a wild, drunken teenage life at times she is also shown as being more responsible and realistic than her mother ever was. I don’t think the book blames Iris for her tendency to fantasize and check out of taking responsibility, because this seems to be her way of keeping herself going and alive for her children, but I think it does write her off to a certain extent. She can’t change her life permanently and although that is partly down to circumstances, it seems to be suggested that there’s something in her character which keeps her from ever getting out from under the life that is crushing her. Perhaps there is something different in the two women’s essential personalities that allows Janie to start again and allow readers to believe that Janie will make a better life than Iris, even though readers will have learned by seeing Iris starting over and over again that a new start is no guarantee of a happily ever after ending. Or perhaps she has just learnt from her mother’s mistakes?

7.) Actually, what does anyone else who has read this book think of ‘The Beginning’ ending? Do you believe Janie can escape poverty through sheer force of will and an aversion to hooking up with men who will take advantage? The book asks readers to be optimistic, but poverty is hard to escape. It’s important that no one call out people who end up in bad situations for being stupid, irresponsible or lazy, because that’s just not how people end up poor or in trouble, but how does Janie and her Ma’s story fit in with those ideas?

8.) Maybe the aspect of the novel which makes it feel as if Iris is doomed to a hard life as much because of her personality, as her unfortunate circumstances, is the product of having her child narrate the story. Detached readers can be sympathetic to Iris and can use their experience outside the novel to help them understand what may have caused Iris to develop her particular personality. Her daughter, on the other hand, may be unable to try and understand the wider causes of Iris’ problematic behaviour, even if she is sympathetic towards her Ma. She is much closer to the situation and has been directly affected by Iris’ actions.

9.) I was glad that Hudson resisted the temptation to treat childhood as an obscuring lens that keeps kids innocent even when they’re in the middle of hard situations, or as a cutesy device which allows adult readers to laugh at the innocence of children. There are certainly things Janie doesn’t understand when she’s small (like what the white powder her mother weighs out really is) because she lacks context, but the pressures of her home life mean she can’t remain clueless for long. She soon understands what having no money means and what the men her mother hooks up with truly promise. She is never tricked by the adults around her and is much more clear-sighted than her mother could ever be, despite her young age.

10.) This book is full of 1990s UK pop-culture references. I often read books full of pop culture references, but they tend to be about the 80s. I recognise the references and I've listened to a lot of the bands, seen a lot of the TV programs that those novels love to remind their readers of, but they’re not references I experience first hand if you know what I mean. I was five by the end of the eighties, but I came of age in the 90s so I experienced the pop culture and fashion that Hudson’s narrator talks about as it was happening. All the words for talking about the things teenagers get up to (drugs, drinking, sex etc) were slang words from the time when I was part of slightly seedy, experimental teenage society. I’m just beginning to grapple with the feeling that the things I grew up with have transitioned from universally known markers of the most recent generation into historical culture. And I imagine that other people my age are just starting to feel like everything they grew up with is being consigned to a museum, which makes the publication of this book perfectly timed. Finding a book full of the markers of your youth is very comforting, even if the subject matter is hard to take. And the nostalgia of hearing about bands, clothes and food that I grew up with means I felt quickly, emotionally linked to this novel.

I also thought that splashing common 90s references through the text was a clever way of making Janie’s particular, harsh experiences feel like something I could easily relate to even though our backgrounds and life experiences were different.

11.) One thing that bothered me about this novel was that for a story that deals with poverty, sex and drugs very realistically, there are some places where the novel inserted cliches and tropes. There’s the juxtaposition between nice, accepting, authentic goth kids and the inauthentic, mean popular girls. Janie’s father’s well off wife is childless and lives in the epitome of the middle class, luxurious but sterile house with beige carpets and extremely clean surfaces. These trips into the land of easy short cuts undermine the realism of the novel and made me doubt the optimism of the open ending was anything but wish fulfillment. And that’s a shame because I’d like to believe whole-heartedly that Janie really could create a brilliant life for herself and now I worry. Perhaps the book doesn't want readers to be entirely certain of where Janie will end up, but I think it strongly tries suggests that she’ll be fine. What a pity some small dips in its commitment to realism leave me wondering if it’s convincing me of the truth, or just glossing over the hard edges and trying to save me heartache.

All in all ‘Tony Hogan bought me an Ice Cream Float before he Stole my Ma’ is an interesting novel, which contains lots to things to think about. It’s a quick, entertaining read and it has a lot of heart. But is it a winner? Make sure to check the Green Carnation Prize blog on 12th Dec 2012 to find out which title has won.

You can see the full list of the reviews our reading group wrote about the books on the short list in the master post. After all this reviewing and discussion, which do you think will take the glory?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wait, so is there no actual LGBT content?

[bookgazing]

There are two small moments of LGBT content. A female social worker propositions Janie's mother. When she's a teenager Janie and her best friend take a male friend, who isn't out, to a lock in at a gay bar. All the main characters are straight.