A headlong rush at life

You don't so much read this rambunctious memoir as get sucked, with much slurping and licking of lips, into it rude, crude and…

You don't so much read this rambunctious memoir as get sucked, with much slurping and licking of lips, into it rude, crude and relentlessly physical, it brings Aidan Higgins's childhood in Kildare and his subsequent adventures in London and South Africa to life in a vivid, headlong rush.

No polite chronicles for Higgins he dashes from one eccentrically focused chapter to the next with a momentum that, as the subtitle suggests, is as compelling as any fiction and the writing is breathtaking.

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace is a former Irish Times journalist