An excellent read. Full of great characters.

Terry Melia’s debut novel offers a lovely blend of good and bad, smart and stupid, characters that stem from real life experience in violent 1970’s Liverpool. Being from Northern Ireland and of a similar age, I very much related to the lead character Tommy Dwyer, an intelligent, street-smart young man who needed to escape from the rat-trap in which he was enclosed - before he died within it. Opportunities to do so presented themselves but not before Tommy pushed life and limb to their limits - all the way to an excellent ending when a new life looms but his actual life literally hangs in the balance. Highly recommended.

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1976,memories.

pretty good, took me back to my youth!
shame about the accents tho...story was engaging.

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1 person found this helpful

Liverpudlian Bildungsroman

As I already appreciate the merits of Terry Melia's novel, this audiobook served as a good opportunity to revisit the story through the many voices of David Hunsdale. Based in the Liverpool of the mid-70s, our hero Tommy Dwyer encounters a range of moral dilemmas and adventures. Whether bringing out the Welsh accents of an extensive third act situated there, or capturing the right tone to evoke the humour, tension or pathos of any particular scene, Hunsdale is an apt choice for narrator. The story itself retains all of the wonderful pacing, well-realised settings and relatable characterisation I remember from reading. There's a fluidity to Melia's prose and this performance does it justice, transitioning between encounters with drug dealers, petty thieves and romantic affairs while developing an impression of Dwyer's world of poverty, aspiration, community and developing sense of justice.

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Brilliant an authentic slice of Liverpool life

The narrator is a great counterpoint to the Liverpool accents. Compelling full of dark wicked humour and vivid charecters. TOMMY DWYER is a Liverpool legend

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2 people found this helpful

covers every aspect of human emotion

mr terry melia has really excelled with this work of fiction truly outstanding considering it's his first book I really enjoyed the liverpudlian humour immensely I can't rate his skill highly enough in words may I suggest any budding film directors give this authors work a chance to appear on the big screen as I'm positive it would become either a drama for tv or adapted into a film very well written terry melia and I hope we don't have to wait to long for a sequel

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Great story, great characters, great scenes.

Straight from the start, the character building is fantastic. Not too overly detailed, but more than enough to paint a picture of the main characters. The story is set in early 1970s Liverpool, mainly in an area of which I have not spent much time, but still I felt as if I knew every road, house and park mentioned in the story, such is the way Terry writes.

I felt empathy for some of the characters, intrigue of others, and even fear of some of the gang members. The trip to Wales added such an interesting element with great new characters, and awkward situations, because obviously 'trouble follows Tommy around'. The anxiety you naturally feel in some of the situations and scenes is broken up brilliantly with some literal laugh-out-loud working class humour. I would love to see these characters come to live in a movie or a theatre production.

It's 'real' without being too gritty, as a lot of stories like this can be. Relatable to many, regardless of your upbringing. Everyone knows or knew of a Tommy, or a Davey, or a Mad Mick. Perhaps we've even been one!

The narration on the audio book by David Hunsdale is great, and his accent (and accents!) works perfectly. Some audiobooks can be jarring when it comes to accents, especially if the person is not a natural native of the area, but David did a great job.

Overall, it's a great story, I intended to listen to it over a few evenings, but such was the writing and story, I finished it in one night. Looking forward to more of Terry Melia's work, and as mentioned, would be great to see this as a play, movie or TV program.

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