POVERTY SAFARI

The Scottish rapper known as Loki reflects on his chaotic Glasgow childhood—and on Britain’s failure “to take lower class people seriously”—in an Orwell Prize–winning debut.

McGarvey calls this memoir “a series of loosely connected rants that give the appearance of a book.” That’s not far off the mark. The narrative is essentially a collection of linked essays that mix the personal and the political as the author inveighs against class inequality in the U.K. The most interesting pieces begin with a memorable event—such as the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London or the construction of the M77 motorway on National Trust land in Glasgow—and then show how it affected people, like the author, who grew up in poor neighborhoods. One entry perceptively explains why McGarvey’s peers faulted the heavy media coverage of a blaze that gutted an iconic building at the Glasgow School of Art: “we grew up in communities where things burn down all the time.” The author also acutely portrays his alcoholic, drug-addicted mother, who shot up in front of him, burned many of the contents of their house in the front yard, tried to dig up their dead dog with her bare hands, and undercut his father’s efforts to provide stability for McGarvey and his four siblings. Homeless and suffering from substance abuse by the age of 18, McGarvey began to turn a corner after extensive psychological counseling at a nonprofit youth center and receiving generous welfare-state benefits, including “supported” housing. Though extensive therapy seemed to provide the help he needed, here, it too often leads to writing deadened by self-help bromides and talk of ills such as “low self-esteem,” “imposter syndrome,” and “negative self-talk.” This book gives an admirably deromanticized view of Scotland but in language not always as fresh as its vision.

A mixture of solid, original reporting on class inequality and a less-effective treatment of personal transformation.