Don Paterson. Toy Fights.

Don Paterson is a Scottish academic and poet who grew up on a council estate in Dundee and failed many of his Highers. This wonderful, tender memoir talks the reader through Paterson’s youth; it is funny, resonant, elegant and gently political.

This is a wonderful celebration of Dundee and the streets, homes and characters that lit up Patterson’s first 20 years. Perhaps the central theme is that music saved Paterson, but this is far from a book about music. It is, instead, a book about the joy and pain of childhood -the fun, the fights, the absolute absurdity of our youth- and about the importance of family and place in shaping our identity.

Caroline and I absolutely loved it and cannot recommend it too highly.