"Pig Iron" by Benjamin Myers

John-John, a traveller (sometimes called a gypsy) from the north-east of England comes out of prison where he has spent five years for a crime of violence. He gets a flat through his probation officer and a job selling ice cream. He's determined to go straight. But he is haunted by the shadows of what he has done and by the physical abuse of his father, one-time bare-knuckle boxing champion of the gypsies.

The story, told in a gentle vernacular, is told by John-John, and his mother, alternating. The writing is wonderful. I loved the repeated device in which John-John uses a word he has learned in prison, when he read voraciously: "Some might say that's whatsit. Aye. Ironic."

The narration is carefully measured out. There are some things (including what I have written above) that are left to the reader to infer. There were questions that I knew I couldn't properly resolve, which are resolved in the final pages. There are twists. As the story unfolds, particularly in the last third of the book, there is a growing sense of dread, a growing understanding of the inevitability of tragedy. There are twists near the end. You'll have to read the book to know how it turns out.

It's a beautifully written book, by the author of the book The Gallows Pole that has now been dramatised by the BBC. I have already ordered more novels by this writer.

Selected Quotes:

• "For now the night is still fuzzy around the edges. Blurred. It's not dark and it's not light. The sun hasn't risen. The sane world is sleeping. It'd that strange inbetween stage that belongs to the creatures." (Part One)
• "If you can't fetch yersel somewhere by foot, then it's not worth fetching to." (Part One)
• "And that's the other thing about being locked up: your body becomes programmed to routine. If they tell you to shit at six, soon enough you'll be shitting at six on the dot. They don't just own your time, they own your bowel movements an all." (Part One)
• "The clouds are so thin they fade away to nowt but pure blue, and the light is shining down in magical looking shafts. Heavenly almost. And there's that smell in the air an all. That special smell; the smell of wet roads and dandelions and warm gravel; ragwort and mulch." (Part One)
• "When I come here, or when I'm out in the fields at dusk, and the sun is setting ower a freshly-cut filed and the hares are out dancing and boxing and that, or the sun is coming up over a still pond and the fish are rising, or when you're up on the moors and there's a proper storm brewing and the air starts to crackle and the light turns this weird brown colour and all your hairs are standing up on end - well, that's when I know what it must feel like to be religious ... Thee idea of summat bigger, I mean. Summat you can't explain." (Part Two)
• "Wow, says Maria so quietly that the word is just the faintest of mumbles falling from her bottom lip." (Part Two)
• "Sleep with dogs and you wake up with fleas." (Part Three)
• "All these years of coming here and I've only just realised that this green cathedral of mine was built by man an all, just like the one in town, only this one is the shell of a cathedral, a cathedral-shaped hole." (Part Three)

June 2023; 282 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God