Tommy's World [Paperback]

this book by the author of "our kid" and others is a hugely
enjoyable read.It begins in a slum district of Manchester in the late 19th century and follows tommys childhood to adulthood.
Early days at home,schol days and working days are brought to life in the authors captivating style.A delightful addition to his previous output

I have loved all of Billy Hopkins's books but I must say that this one has more of the stuff that I really love about this author.
His talent is all about the recreation of a bygone era combined with simply making you want to find out what happens next.
This is his best book since Our Kid itself!

Billy Hopkins' father Tommy is the first person singular narrator of Tommy's World. As for Tommy's World itself, it is the long-awaited companion volume to Kate's Story, together with which it constitutes a parallel prequel to Billy Hopkins' breakthrough best-seller Our Kid. Meanwhile, in his new capacity as raconteur Tommy Hopkins extends to his readership a Mancunian welcome warm as buttered toast by the fireside on a winter's night and his favourite Fry's cocoa, in which vein he then proceeds to relate the story of his childhood, adolescence and young manhood, listing a whole variety of trials, tribulations and simple pleasures that attend his first twenty-three years on this planet. Here, by way of example, is how Tommy Hopkins sees his beloved mother as an infant:

"As befitted a visit to church, she was dressed modestly but tastefully in her finest navy blue coat, a pair of white gloves, while over her head and shoulders she draped a lovely black lace mantilla, one of her proudest possessions. When I saw my mother all dressed up like this, I couldn't help thinking how beautiful she was and how lucky I was that she was my mother."

Our narrator then goes on to describe his father in similar terms, though the aforementioned mantilla quite naturally gives way to a bowler hat and other masculine accoutrements . . . But how is it (here, I pause to give readers of Life magazine some indication of the author's mastery of the narrative art, should they perhaps be unaware of this as yet) . . . How is it, I ask, that such straightforward descriptions as these, simple though they appear to be in print, just so happen (in my not so humble opinion in the matter) to be imbued with a certain literary savoir-faire by means of which Tommy Hopkins succeeds in conveying to his readers a feeling that what he is doing here is simultaneously visualising a time when everything he most loves in this world will, like so many other things in his life, perhaps be snatched from him by cruel Providence?*
Here's how the Press release describes Tommy's World . . .

"Billy's father Tommy takes centre stage in Tommy's World, a warm-hearted and nostalgic novel set at the turn of the nineteenth-to-twentieth century. Tommy Hopkins' early years aren't too promising, [he suffers] not only penury but a series of tragedies too. Denied the chance of a promising career as an engineer, Tommy finds employment at Manchester's Smithfield market and works his way up, finally catching the eye of Kate Lally - who may just be the love of his life.

"With charm, warmth and humour, Billy Hopkins vividly evokes the tragic, and always touching story of his beloved dad. Tommy's World gives the reader a glimpse of a time almost forgotten, and of people who knew how to make the best of what little they had."

All this is true, of course. Tommy's World is warm and nostalgic and sentimental, too. Furthermore, readers who are only too aware that their own loved ones lived alongside Tommy Hopkins' in by-gone Collyhurst, Ancoats or Cheetham are going to find themselves reading this book (as most certainly we did reading Kate's Story and Our Kid) with an uncanny feeling that they are an integral part of this story - indeed, that any one or all of them may appear on stage at any moment, or at least be discovered living out their lives at a neighbouring address in circumstances akin to those experienced by Tommy Hopkins' family, with poverty, hunger, contagious disease and early demise dancing close attendance upon them on a daily basis.

Tommy's World is a deceptively simple book, an oblique testament, as it were, to the author's abiding and lifelong commitment to civilised values. Have we (I seem to hear Billy Hopkins enquire, though I may well be mistaken about this) . . . Have we in our headlong pursuit of proper nutrition, health, happiness, pensionable employment, our annual holiday in some exotic clime, Motability, designer kitchens, clothes and all the rest perhaps thrown out any "babies" with the slum dwelling-tainted bath water of yesteryear? Or temporarily misplaced them at any rate?

By way of example, though I wouldn't want to give away any part of this story, there are parts of it I find almost inexpressibly sad. Those schoolchildren, for instance, whose attendance at school is adjudged of greater importance by their teachers than the fact they turn up at school unshod. Okay, even in Tommy's World shoeless schoolchildren are in the minority, and it will be another half century at least before teachers hear tell of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. So nobody may be censured for this. But why is it, I wonder, that in this same day and age, and similarly lacking Abraham Maslow's wisely researched input in the matter, a certain Mr Franco Rocca, the proprietor of an ice-cream parlour on Great Ancoats street, would of his own volition . . .

"[supply] football boots to those players [on Tommy's team] who couldn't afford them"?

Out of the sheer goodness of his heart, I'd venture to suggest! Mind you, I offer this conclusion as an afterthought; my initial reaction was an unexpected onset of tears.

*'My own feeling is that, given the dire warnings of suffering and
hardships we can expect from the [present]recession, my father's
story helps to put things in perspective . . . Suffering! We
don't know the half of it!'

Billy Hopkins, 1 November 2009