So Far to Go

Rhodri Jones
Published by Canongate Kelpies
0-86241-249-8, £1.95

Social realism novels? This one takes some beating - older brothers sent down for stealing and drug-trafficking, sisters on the game, all and sundry on the dole, graffiti-daubed council estates, racial prejudice, gang warfare, biased policemen, the North/South divide, self-interested council officials; thank goodness there's a secret garden where Ian can escape, find a kind of fulfilment and a hope for the future. Upping sticks from Glasgow to London might work out after all. Dialects might deter, but those who relish a good wallow in social injustice will warm to it.

Reviewed in BfK No. 57 (July 1989) by David Bennett (DB)
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