Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION

Peering into the forgotten lives within Thatcher’s Britain, Kerry Hudson’s novel brings to life the council houses, the B&Bs and the back streets of England and Scotland in the Eighties and Nineties. We start with our narrator Janie, an independent voice and loveable protagonist whose life begins by hearing her mother Iris scream a litany of vulgar words to the midwife who brings Janie into the world. Janie goes on to describe the harsh circumstances she’s born into—a reality of violence, poverty, and her mother’s depression. The Ryan women have “filthy tempers, filthy mouths and big bruised muscles for hearts,” yet Janie’s mother Iris always sets aside time to look sternly towards her daughter and cast about life advice on how to remain proud and steadfast in her beliefs. Tender moments, however, will not be able to shield the Ryan women from Iris’s mounting anger and alcohol consumption.

A spectacular fight lands Janie and her mother in a women’s shelter where the two meet of whole host of ladies who talk about the men who come and go and the ties that bind the women together in the first place. From there it’s on to a dodgy council flat and a succession of unsuitable men, including the hard-drinking, drug-dealing, ice-cream buying Tony Hogan. Tony is a menacing and powerful figure who is able to provide for the Ryan women at first, but his violent tendencies bring Janie under the custody of social services, which provides a deeply affecting solace that lasts into her teens. Iris is determined to reclaim her daughter and does. Bringing her across England and Scotland—from one council estate or B&B to another, either escaping Tony, struggling to quit a mild drug habit, or chasing after Doug, another pitiful suitor of Iris—is not well received by Janie at first. Yet the women—joined by Janie’s new little sister, Tiffany (or “Tiny”)—grow a stronger bond as they grapple with Doug’s many empty promises and upheavals from one depressing locale to the next.

Janie, now a teenager, begins high school by borrowing her mother’s penchant for alcohol and foul language. She starts to think for herself and with little regard for her mother’s advice and paints a vivid picture of the challenges facing a poverty stricken youth in the harsh atmosphere of maturing teenagers. Janie brings readers on a bruised journey, through her physical anguish nurtured by alcohol and drugs, to physical abuse and more, eventually fixing a path for herself—if she could escape Ma and Tiny, it might just be a fresh start. A bittersweet novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma explores the doldrums of the UK as the poor had seen it—its morass, the distinctive voices and personalities that bring about its character and rhythm are also what showcase the hopefulness that even the most battered and unfortunate can hold onto in order to remain true to themselves. The indefatigable heart of Iris is the lifeblood that Janie clings to, warts and all.

ABOUT KERRY HUDSON

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Growing up in a succession of council estates, B&Bs, and caravan parks provided her with a keen eye for idiosyncratic behavior, material for life, and a love of travel. Her first novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma was winner of the Scottish First Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Southbank Sky Arts Literature Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Green Carnation Prize, Author’s Club First Novel Prize and the Polari First Book Award. Hudson’s second novel Thirst was developed with support from the National Lottery through an Arts Council England grant and will be published by Chatto & Windus in 2014. She currently lives and writes in Hackney.

A CONVERSATION WITH KERRY HUDSON

A unique device in your novel is using Janie as a narrator, even when she’s an infant. What was this process like and how did you come to write from that perspective as you did?

This was the first novel I ever wrote and I started writing just thinking “Keep it simple, go easy on yourself.” It made logical sense to begin at the very beginning and work forward. Of course, it’s actually not a simple thing to interpret a very adult world through a child’s eyes but somehow as soon as I started writing Janie Ryan was just there, fully formed, and so it felt very straight forward none the less. I sometimes joke that I could almost feel Janie Ryan's little fists pummelling at my back urging me to keep on writing.

Your vivid descriptions of the wretched flats, the grotesque colors and smells, the squalor—it’s all quite poignant. How important was it for you to capture this authentically and to what extent did your experience growing up in similar settings advance the story?

I felt it was hugely important to portray both the more hopeful and very hopeless aspects of living on the margins authentically. One of the reasons I ever sat down to write the book was because I hadn’t been able to find an authentic portrayal of the streets I grew up on—and all the raw energy, anger, laughter and loyalty that could be found there. My experience was very similar to Janie’s in that I grew up on the same council estates, care homes, and B&B’s. (I guess the American version of these would be grim long-stay motels.) The fact I can say without a doubt that these things do happen, that I saw them myself, has been really important to how people respond to the book I think.

Iris, or “Ma,” was at times an endearing character, though she was off-putting in some of her actions as a parent and a judge of character. How did you find a balance between her shortcomings and her strength as a responsible mother working against the odds?

As with most elements of the novel I didn't make any conscious decisions about creating a sort of “diamond in the rough” character before I started. I only wanted to portray the emotional truth of a vulnerable single mother really against the odds but who desperately wants to do the best for her children. I spent a lot of time wondering how I would have coped with an abusive boyfriend, little family support or income, and a child depending on me when I was twenty-one. Despite all the missteps that Iris makes, I found myself with a lot of compassion and admiration for how hard she works just to get through each day.

Do you look at the bouts of depression and the propensity towards anger as the ills that ravaged the Ryan women, or perhaps a strange source of their enduring strength and devotion to each other?

I think, as with many things in this story, it is a little of both. When people are absolutely at the edge of abyss—at those extremes of emotion—they turn to others, they draw on their last reserves of strength and band together and this is very much what you witness in Iris, Janie and Tiny during the book. That fierceness, that incredible bond of love, they have for each other is because of those things. But it would be wrong not to say that that level of unresolved anger, that propensity for depression, is not the source of much trouble for them, ultimately it makes their already hard lives much harder.

Iris tells Janie to think of herself as “an iron fist in a velvet glove.” Was she trying to strengthen her daughter from the humility of being poor, or to steel her from the dangers that come from being a woman in a man’s world?

Iris, because that is all she knows, is trying to teach Janie to protect herself. It is neither just about poverty or being female but simply that, for Iris, the whole world is a hostile place in every single way: because she is poor, because she is a woman, because they have no family, because they are so isolated. So in part this statement is Iris trying to teach Janie how to survive but it is also a placing of her own terrors and fears onto her child because she simply has no one else to express these things to.

What are some of your literary influences, especially when setting this novel in Great Britain during the 1980s and 1990s?

As I’ve said, one of the reasons I chose to write about the world I came from was because I had found it so hard to find literature that reflected my own experiences within society. I was an avid reader of Roddy Doyle throughout my teens and twenties and that definitely contributed to the humour and energy of the book. I also read everything I could by Iain Banks in my teens and I’m sure that impacted the Scottish sections of the book. Otherwise my literary loves were the ones most writers site: To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, books that feel like they have a heart beating between the pages of them, full of compassion, human fragility and beauty. Ironically, it was only after publication that I discovered the authors I'd been searching for all along in Jeanette Winterson, Janice Galloway, Alan Warner, and James Kellman, to name a few.

Do you believe that most working class Brits under Thatcher could relate to the struggles that the family must face in the novel? And are things much different now in these particular areas you write about?

One of the most gratifying things about writing this book have been the number of people who grew up on similar estates, with similar domestic or social problems, who have contacted me to tell me how much the book chimed with them. I wish I could say that things had improved, but from years of my own experience working for a children’s charity—the NSPCC, tackling abuse and neglect in the United Kingdom—that just isn’t the case. Even in a country as developed as the UK there is still so much to be done to ensure that children are properly cared for, that the ones on the poverty line aren’t overlooked or left behind.

Janie laments that “we were a glass family, she was a glass ma and I needed to wrap us up, handle her gently.” Do you feel that Janie would have felt this level of responsibility for the family if her father hadn’t left?

I think it’s fairly clear that none of the men in novel (Frankie, the uncle, Janie’s father, Doug, or Tony Hogan) would have made the Ryan women’s life easier or relieved Janie of what she sees as her responsibility to protect the family. Proper mental healthcare for Iris, a relief from constant poverty, a school that invested in her or social housing with greater support networks may have made a difference but none of the men in the novel where ever the answer or safety Iris was looking for.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished my second novel, Thirst, an unconventional love story set between East London and Siberia that I travelled the length of Russia by train to research, which will be published in the UK in July 2014. I’m also making a one-woman show of Tony Hogan and working on my third novel which will tell one woman’s story while transiting several different countries.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Is this was what you were expecting of a novel taking place during the 1980s and Thatcher’s Britain? Does it change or reinforce your thoughts on that era?
2. The men drift in and out of this story, but Iris was willing to give anyone another chance. Would you have done the same if you were Iris? Why or why not?
3. Could Iris have survived without Janie and Tiny? Would her demons overtake her or would she have been better off alone?
4. For much of the book, Janie recalls her time with Nell quite fondly. Did she pity her mother or yearn for something more stable that led her thoughts back to Nell time and time again?
5. We only see fleeting glimpses of Tony’s character, but he looms throughout the book and also in the title. Do you think Tony and his traits were indicative of men in this era? In what other ways does Tony enforce the broader themes of the novel?
6. When Janie and Ma first get to London, Janie notices that the people in London “each knew where the other would step before they’d decided themselves.” When does she come to realize that, for her, leaving Ma would help her take a decisive step herself?
7. When Tiny was to be born, Janie has an immediate distaste for the prospect of sharing her mother. Were her expressions as strong as her feelings on this?
8. Was it jarring to read Janie’s descriptions of her experiences with alcohol, drugs, and sex? Do you think her mother contributed to her careless attitude towards these things?
9. What role does food play in the lives of the characters?
10. What was it that drove Janie back to Beth, who eventually became her best friend? What were their similarities to each other? Their differences?
11. Janie makes an important decision at the end of the book. What did you expect her to do? Do you think she will wind up like Iris?
12. What do you think might happen to Iris and Tiny? Might they finally settle down as a family with Doug?