- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (2 Jun 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224071084
- ISBN-13: 978-0224071086
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.2 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,060,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Broken Boy
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More About the Author
Product Description
Tom Adair, Scotland on Sunday
'an often perceptive, constantly genre defying gem'
Anthony Daniels, Sunday Telegraph
'charming, interesting and moving by turn'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
This book is not for everyone but some will find it an education.,
This review is from: The Broken Boy (Paperback)
To enjoy this book, one has to have been born in the era when Polio was just as much feared as are modern illnesses... Like the guy in the book I was hit by this illness when a child.... it's not a happy story nor is it meant to be. (I won't include a 'spoiler' in this review....) but enough to say that some memories are hard to revisit!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Polio in Cork,
By Mschwindt - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Broken Boy (Paperback)
The author, who contracted polio at age six, was one of many victims of the polio epidemic in Cork,
Ireland. Over 50,000 got the virus in 1956, "one of the last great outbreaks of polio anywhere in Western Europe." An outbreak that occurred just a few years after a vaccine had been developed in America. The book is interesting when it describes the way that the community denied and downplayed the effects of epidemic. Newspapers, then still the main source of information in Ireland, never named polio victims and only published, more or less uncritically, official reports on the epidemic. This, and apparently, the desire of the business community to maintain economic stability in the community, created an environment of incoherent hysteria where children were kept home from school and public swimming pools closed, but pubs remained opened. Patrick Cockburn, a distinguished international news correspondent, was gravely affected by the disease. Today, he walks with a limp, cannot run or drive a car. He tells quite a bit of his days in hospital and feelings at the time. He seems, though, a bit reticent about it at times, because it was so long ago and also perhaps because of a resentment at his parents moving house to Cork, despite warnings about the epidemic. His parents were Claud and Patricia Cockburn. His father was a leftist writer and his mother a daughter of Anglo-Irish upper-class parents. Both were adventurous and neither were accustomed to changing their plans if risks were involved. Much of the book, perhaps too much, is written about his parents and their background. For those readers of Alexander Cockburn, Patrick's brother, this family background is very familiar ground. Well-written and interesting in places, this is a slight contribution to the literature on diseases and epidemics. Cockburn laments the lack of information on polio epidemic in Cork, so perhaps this is spadework for another, larger book. For those who are interested in epidemics in general, Cockburn points to a classic account, Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. 1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Polio,
By T. Porges - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Broken Boy (Paperback)
I had polio, about the same in immediate and long-term effect as Cockburn, at about the same time. The reason for the reticence the earlier reviewer notes is that at that time we were all bombarded by images of kids in iron lungs, and by encouraging stories about other little boys and girls who'd had polio or other crippling diseases and accidents (the miler Glenn Cunningham was a teacher favorite) and who'd gone on to greatness of one kind or another.
Part of that message was that if we weren't going to be cheerful overachievers we should at least have the grace to shut up about it, since so many others (the coffin kids) had it so much worse. To be a polio survivor is to know absolutely that whatever you may think you deserve, there's another kid in the ward who deserves much more; however great you think you are there's another kid who's better. It screws me up at job interviews but otherwise makes me a better person than I might otherwise be -- though not, as noted, as good as Patrick Cockburn, most likely. This is a good book. A nice comparison read would be Wilfrid Sheed's _People Will Always Be Kind_. |
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