STUART BY ALEXANDER MASTERS
This is the biography of Stuart Shorter, a thief, a hostage
taker, a drug taker, a psychopath and a victim of society and its prejudices, perceptions and misunderstandings.
Alexander Masters interviews and follows Masters through two turbulent years and
describes the torrid existence of life on the streets of Cambridge. This hapless, directionless, homeless man bounces through life from one institution, social service and prison to another.
An asthmatic child, Shorter suffers a traumatic childhood and finds it difficult to settle at school. For two years he attends a special school where he is sexually abused by his teacher and from their declines into a life of crime and despair.
Masters vividly describes the squalour, the hopelessness, the destitution and at times the humour that sums up Stuart Shorter’s sad 30 years of life. Shorter’s life ends tragically when he is killed by a train. Typical of all his life, the authorities give the matter little attention, assume it was suicide from an unstable psychopath and bury him with little ceremony or fuss. Masters argues differently claiming it was tragic accident.
Given that this is Alexander Masters first novel it is an excellent achievement. It is a comedy of errors and a tale of tragedies told in a moving and compelling style. The book has received some impressive comments from respected critics of the national press, in particular noting how incisive and original the book is, especially given the fact that it is Masters first book.
For me, it is also a sad indictment of the shortcomings of some aspects of English society and its prejudices and bias towards the underprivileged. The book records with bitter and ironic humour the collision of two wildly different social worlds.