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Free is part squatting guide, part diary and is loaded with statistics. Sometimes it feels as if Hibbert has counted every Pret A Manger sandwich that ended up in a landfill. Her anger at the waste of consumer society is relentless.
Over the past year, we have focused on the fall of the bankers, but Free is a reminder that the recession has had an equally dramatic effect on those several rungs below them on the financial ladder. --The Telegraph, January 18 2010
Hibbert finds out soon enough that most squatters, contrary to common perception, are not chaotic anarchist scroungers but are efficient, organised and genuinely committed to living cooperatively...She sorts herself out with stabe housing and a team of like-minded "freegans", with whom she shares the task of trawling supermarket bins for discarded food.
In this account of her varied, and largely positive, experiences, Hibbert paints a detailed and often funny self-portrait of a young Londoner who sneaks fox-like around her city, managing to survive off its detritus for a whole year, affording her the time to appreciate her choices and her relative youth more fully than had she stayed in her "cosy, domesticated rut". --Times Litarary Supplement, June 4 2010
Free documents the sense of community and teamwork among squatters...Hibbert writes vividly about the tension and excitement of creeping through unlocked back windows of long-abandoned houses to change the locks without alerting the police, and also about the trauma of eviction.
However, she does have her limits such as a disused hospital with asbestos pipes and a vertiginous tree house with rats.
Her book is a passionate plea against the rubbish society. It might not be free, but it's worth reading even if you don't find it in a skip. --ROOF - Shelter's Housing Magazine, May 2010
A fascinating study which proves that waste is aplenty in our consumer society. --The Independent, January 15, 2010
A detailed and often funny self-portrait of a young Londoner who sneaks fox-like around her city, surviving off its detritus. --Times Literary Supplement
A passionate plea against the rubbish society. It might not be free, but it's well worth reading.
--ROOF - Shelter's Housing Magazine, May/June 2010
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This is essentially a book about squatting. I assumed we'd be following the author on a steep downward depressing spiral into filth, squalor and crack dens, but I was amazed to find her life did not go that way at all and the book is surprisingly uplifting. Katharine lives in a succession of squats, lives by "skipping" discarded food from bins behind supermarkets and sandwich shops, and gets around on a bike she finds abandoned and fixes it herself using tools borrowed from a squatter-friendly bike repair enterprise.
Amonng the lessons we learn are: 1. some squatters are nice people; 2. your home is unlikely to be taken over by squatters if you just nip out to buy a newspaper; 3. squatters often make their homes quite comfortable; 4. shops and supermarkets throw out vast amounts of perfectly edible food every day; 5. hitch-hiking is still possible in the UK.
So was Katherine's new money-free lifestyle a success? You'll have to read the book to find out. I can tell you it's made me now begrudge every penny I spend on anything!
I work in a bookshop, and had been sceptical when I had first seen this appear on our shelves. After a few days of flicking through it, I was convinced that its content would only annoy me, and that I would feel angry at this group of people who manage to live without money whilst I only earn retail wages.
What I did not expect was the honest account of someone who was very much like me; middle-class, university educated, and in many other ways pretty much average. It was so lovely to read from a squatter's point of view without being overloaded with the activist mindset which has always made me recoil from squatters.
I consider myself to be an open minded person, or at least open to new ideas, but so often when encountering squatters there has been an air of elitism around them which does not do them any favours, so I really enjoyed the more impartial approach to squatting. I also really enjoyed reading about skipping and the huge quantities of good food which go to waste every day, and was thoroughly dismayed to read that companies purposefully damage good food so as to make it inedible to skippers.
Really interesting and enjoyable all round!
"It's good to know that there are always escape routes if things... Read more
The beginning of the book was I felt at times like a bit of a lecture but with a probably good story... Read more
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