Stuart: A Life Backwards

This was an absorbing tale that made an immediate impact. kudos to the author. This book details the life of a man usually ignored by society. Alexander first meets Stuart as he slouches by a doorway begging for money. Usually we walk by and forget about the incident, like the author (to an extent), but this book addresses - what if we learned about this person's life? Is this person less valuable or important then those deemed acceptable by society? If truth be told, the sections told by Stuart are the most interesting parts. The more I learned about Stuart, the faster I read on to learn more. Providing details about Stuart will ruin the impact of a story that needs to be read. It is not a book written by an author preaching but gets the point across all the same. You first meet Stuart as a man in his early 30s who is honest about himself and honorable in his own way. Reading about his childhood only highlights the tragedy. It is depressing to think how how many suffer the same fate. This is not a lighthearted read! Stuart had great potential and it was squashed out of him. Alexander Masters does a phenomenal job of allowing Stuart to live on. This story starts with the catalyst of their unlikely friendship, two charity workers being sentenced, and builts from there by going backwards. The sections where Alexander catalogues exactly how Stuart (or anyone in his position) lives his day-to-day life was eye opening for this reader. This book proved to me that every person has an important story to tell. Outside of my immediate circle, I pay attention to people who lead newsworthy or over-the-top lives. I need to pay more attention to everyone around me even if they appear invisible because they are not and they perhaps, have more important things to say if only I would listen.

I struggled with this book at first, but I'm glad I stuck with it. It's worth the effort. You can almost see the sweat that went into researching and writing 'Stuart.' It's really a fantastic research and assimilation job by Alexander Masters. Though called 'A Life Backwards,' Masters tells us two interwoven tales: you get the flashpoints of Stuart's life told in reverse, and - simultaneously - we get an ongoing, running narrative of the author and subject's current relationship through the course of various events like street protests, doctor's appointments, hospital visits, and random violent flare-ups by the book's protagonist. The brilliance of laying out the life backwards is the step-by-step revealing of the seminal events of Stuart's early life. We're presented with one jawdropper after another. While even Stuart wouldn't have condoned much of his own behavior (indeed, he comes across as his own worst critic), Masters point at tracing the arc of Stuart's life is that if you're one to look for root causes for bad behavior, this guy has them in spades. You would not wish Stuart's childhood on anyone. Three things stick out: 1) Masters effort. It took work, work and more work to build this story. The guy deserves all the praise he gets. 2) The relationship between author and subject. Though they could not be more different, you see and feel the affection they've built for each other. 3) Masters' exasperation. Every time he thought he had Stuart figured out, the guy would go and do something inexplicably beyond the pale. And, as a reader, *you* get exasperated as well. Masters portrays Stuart as someone you want to like, but Stuart does not make the liking easy. At all.

"Stuart: A Life Backwards", the new book by Alexander Masters, deserves every accolade that can be awarded. With a keen writer's eye, a gift for narrative and a friendship that lasted only four years, Masters recounts the life of Stuart Clive Shorter whose untimely death in 2002 inspired this work. The essence of Stuart's life seemed to be courage in the face of so much adversity that one wonders how he lived even into his early thirties. His drug addiction, his MS, bouts of homelessness countered by months of living in small flats, an incestuous relationship with his brother....all of this did not keep Stuart from enjoying a certain high degree of humor and acceptance of the way of life that only he could lead. Masters takes these things into account as he spends some of his own time among Stuart's acquaintances on the street. While the author keeps an appropriate distance he can't help but being amused and fascinated by this man about whom he would eventually write. "Stuart" is not an easy book to get through, at times. Far from your summertime read at the beach, this book is better read without distraction because Masters comments with great care not only on Stuart, but his situation at all aspects of Stuart's life. Writing it "backwards" works very well in this case, because it endears the reader to Stuart as the book continues. Stuart Shorter is not a person that most of us would ever get to know or maybe even care to know, but Alexander Masters has shown us that there are those people in life we either overlook or tend to forget. I'm glad he reminds us and I highly recommend "Stuart" for its warmth and complexity.

Masters' boggles the mind with the creativity and poignancy of this book. The style is the first thing to hit the reader; as the reader notices that the biography goes from death to birth and not the other way around. This brilliant technique gives the book a literary style that is unique and playful; on a topic that is anything but playful. Masters' integration of style and message is truly superb. He tries to convey the actual visceral reality of homelessness through the biography of a real homeless person. There are two things Masters attempts to elucidate and succeeds brilliantly. Firstly, he tries to illustrate how a person could become a homeless person in the first place. Second, he tries to illustrate how even in the UK, where the "System" is so much different than in the US, there is little positive result in either system. In many ways, the "System" only exacerbates the original conditions that created the environment to turn a person to the street. Interestingly, Masters tells lots of amazing details about homelessness. His statement that it only takes about 4 weeks before a new homeless person becomes acclimatized to the "homeless life" or "rough sleeping" as he calls it, and finds that it is not so bad and they don't want to go back. This speed is almost inconceivable. Masters is not high and mighty in his book, he does not claim to have an answer to the problem. But rather, he looks at the problem in its nakedness in order to try and find a resolution. The book is truly a wonderful example of how a person could get to a condition of permanent homelessness. It is recommended for all readers with a social conscience.

Stuart reads the manuscript of his biography. He doesn't like it. And now he has to tell Alexander Masters, his biographer, what the problem is. Stuart begins gently: "I don't mean to be rude. I know you put a lot of work in." And then Stuart gets specific. He'd like more "jokes, yarns, humor" and less research. In fact, he'd like a different book --- a bestseller, "like what Tom Clancy writes." Then he drops the bomb: "Alexander, you gotta start again. You gotta do better than this." Please understand who's talking: a 30-odd year-old formerly homeless ex-junkie who has been in and out of jail, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, who was repeatedly abused as a child by his brother and a teacher. In short, a loser. What qualifies this disaster of a man to deliver literary criticism? But one of the many great things about Stuart is his honesty. And his originality. "Do it [the book] the other way round," he advises. "Make it more like a murder mystery. What murdered the boy I was? See? Write it backwards." Alexander Masters takes that advice. As he says, at the end of the first chapter: "So here it is, my second attempt at the story of Stuart Shorter, thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopath street raconteur, my spy on how the British chaotic underclass spend their troubled days at the beginning of the twenty-first century: a man with an important life. "I wish I could have done it more quickly. I wish I could have presented it to Stuart before he stepped in front of the 11.15 London to King's Lynn train." Well, that's starting at the end, isn't it? The absolute end. And Stuart was right --- it worked better that way, and on every level. First, as a reading experience: This book is, literally, like nothing you have ever read. And then, it has been praised by just about everyone with a byline. In England, where it was first published, it won the Guardian First Book Award and, in the category of biography, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. It's being made into a television movie --- in death, everybody wants to be Stuart Shorter's friend. Which is ironic, because, when it mattered, almost the only person who consistently showed up for Stuart was his unlikely biographer --- who was his exact opposite. Masters, born in New York, is of Mayflower stock. His parents were accomplished writers. He had a "really, really nice childhood." After college, he entered a PhD program in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Then he started working with the homeless and --- on a grate on a London street --- met Stuart. "Introduce Stuart to readers as he is now, a fully-fledged gawd-help-us, and he may just grab their interest right away," Masters notes. "By the time they reach his childhood, it is a matter of genuine interest how he turned into the person he is." Well, how's this for catching our attention: At the beginning of the book, Stuart announces that he's planning to kill himself. But it has to look like murder. "My brother killed himsel