ABSTRACT
The book is a personal look at identity and social class seen through the eyes of an aspiring psychologist from a lower working-class background in Belfast, observing his situation and the changes and transformations that are necessary to allow him to achieve his ambition. The first chapter starts right at the beginning, back in Legmore Street in Belfast, in a crumbling mill house, and the back yard, with the yard wall as the barrier and the escape, and religion and promises of an eternal Hell and sporadic violence everywhere. We were all in a gang and that brought its own rules and responsibilities. I passed the Eleven Plus and that changed my world. A world divided, a world on a knife edge, trying to keep my two lives apart, trying to learn Russian in the front room, the only room in the house for people to sit. Reciting my declensions out loud in front of a bewildered mother (my father had died). I read Dostoevsky in Russian and found a voice that spoke to me about the deeper and darker layers of the human psyche. It made me want to learn more about human experience and suffering, and letting go.
