The Hard Shoulder Review

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The Hard Shoulder ReviewSet in 1985 or '86, Petit's fourth novel operates on two levels, both of which succeed, though neither is overwhelming. Most obviously, it is a psychological novel about Pat O'Grady, a former tough guy just released from ten years in prison. Not so tough anymore, he goes to live in his sister's boarding house in the unfashionable Kilburn neighborhood of North London. Unlike the typical Hollywood "just-out-of-jail" story, there's no one waiting for him-in fact, quite the opposite, his wife left him as soon as he went to prison and took their 8-year-old daughter with her. His nunnish sister wrote him off ages ago and is barely civil to him, while their mother lives in mute senility in a nursing home.
O'Grady commences this new part of his life intending to live a quiet, solitary existence. However, with no real plan, he soon falls prey to Shaughnessy, a sly chatterbox fellow Irishman who fills his head with schemes of recovering "what's owed to him" from the job that landed him in prison. Confused by the changes in society, and fueled by long sessions in the local pub, the adrift O'Grady starts getting notions of redemption. In addition to halfheartedly following Shaughnessy's lead, he also starts searching for his now teenage daughter. It's a compelling portrait of a half-broken man, a realistic ex-con who doesn't burst from prison with plans, but is indecisive, weak, and with without purpose in a changed world.
It's this changed world that is the other level on which the novel operates. Petit has done a rather neat job of showing how Irish have operated socially as a traditional underclass in London, and how one such neighborhood stands on the brink of gentrification. The "grab-what-you-can" ethos of the Thatcher era is displayed through O'Grady's ex-wife (whose name, in case you needed a little nudge, is Maggie), and his former partner in crime, who now lives in a mansion and deals in currency speculation. O'Grady comes to realize that those with the drive and ambition are operating on a whole different level, and the money's he's after is a joke in this world.
Ultimately, this is a tough story, and not a little depressing. O'Grady is someone who chose the wrong path long ago, has spent ten years in jail realizing it, and now has no future in Maggie's Britain.The Hard Shoulder OverviewO'Grady comes home from jail to an Irish area of London weathering the harsh new climate of Mrs. Thatcher's Britain. Though this is a place he recognizes, he now feels lost in it. His estranged wife has moved on, and the daughter he barely knows is living with a wealthy record producer. Alcohol and the random chances it brings begin to define his life. People offer him schemes and fantasies, and he is expected to perform some action that will change lives. Undermining the conventions of the thriller, this book is an evocation of the gray avenues and pubs of Irish London as its most hopeless, semi-criminal milieu of the lost.

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