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Stuart: A Life Backwards

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 1,516 ratings · 228 reviews

In this extraordinary book, Alexander Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see. A gripping who-done-it journey back in time, it begins with Masters meeting a drunken Stuart lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, England, and leads through layers of hell…back through crimes and misdemeanors, prison and ho...more

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published May 30th 2006 by Delacorte Press (first published 1995)

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Nov 17, 2012 Belle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: You! Yes, you. Read this. It's amazing.

Shelves: all-the-feelings, true-facts

I don't even know how to begin reviewing Stuart: A life Backwards. Well, I guess I should start at the beginning - which, of course, is actually the end of Stuart's story. Don't worry, it's not as confusing as it sounds. The book opens with Stuart Shorter, an "ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath", telling the author of his biography, Alexander Masters, that it's "bollocks boring". Alexander, having worked on the manuscript in question for years, is understandably frustrated, and questions Stuart's...more
I don't even know how to begin reviewing Stuart: A life Backwards. Well, I guess I should start at the beginning - which, of course, is actually the end of Stuart's story. Don't worry, it's not as confusing as it sounds. The book opens with Stuart Shorter, an "ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath", telling the author of his biography, Alexander Masters, that it's "bollocks boring". Alexander, having worked on the manuscript in question for years, is understandably frustrated, and questions Stuart's expertise (or lack thereof) on the matter. Stuart's response? "Make it more like a murder mystery. What murdered the boy I was? See? Write it backwards."

Thankfully, Alexander took Stuart's advice and rewrote the book, and so begins a journey back through time to discover not just the cause of the death of Stuart's innocence, but of Stuart himself - he died of probable suicide before the second version of the manuscript was complete. I know, it sounds completely dreary and depressing - and it completely is at times - but more often than that it's totally entertaining and even inspiring. Which sounds a bit morbid in the same paragraph as suicide, but I guess it shows just how strange - and brilliant - this book is. A bit like Stuart himself.

In theory, Stuart shouldn't work as a hero. He's vulgar, violent and a little bit (OK, a lot) mad, spending much of the story either homeless or in prison. But he's also charming, wise and strangely moral in his own way. It's this paradoxical nature that makes him so fascinating and, ultimately, likable. In Alexander's capable hands, Stuart's character jumps from the page, his voice captured perfectly so that you feel as though he's right in front of you.

One of the reasons Alexander seems to have been able to capture Stuart so well is because he appears to have developed a strong and genuine friendship with his subject. Some might question how appropriate this is for a biographer, but it works. In fact, one of the loveliest aspects of the book is the unlikely friendship between the middle class, sheltered writer and the irrepressible vagabond. That's not to say it's an easy relationship. Alexander is frequently uncomfortable in Stuart's company, and even more frequently irritated. But through his honest and amusing account of his reactions and thoughts, Alexander makes Stuart accessible and real. These humourous encounters also act as much-needed breaks from the flashbacks to Stuart's earlier life, which gets darker and more disturbing the further back we go.

You can probably guess what happens, although perhaps not all of it(view spoiler). Let's just say it's horrific and graphic and made me feel physically ill. While it makes Stuart all the more inspiring, it also reinforces the great tragedy of his tale. If he was that brilliant, in his own way, after all he'd been through - imagine the kind of man he would have been if the "boy he was" hadn't been murdered.

Excuse me while I go pick up the broken pieces of my shattered heart from the floor.

This review also appears on my blog, along with my review of the movie adapation starring Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch.

(less)

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Aug 20, 2012 liz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

So all of the praise on the jacket seems to involve people falling over themselves. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And not that I don't get it. It's just that, well... it's not that kind of a book. Stuart is a homeless guy... except he's not, when we meet him. Who's mentally ill... except he's doing okay, when we meet him. Who's been in prison countless times. Who the system failed... except it didn't, because somebody who wasn't himself had to get him out of that parking garage. Stu...more So all of the praise on the jacket seems to involve people falling over themselves. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And not that I don't get it. It's just that, well... it's not that kind of a book. Stuart is a homeless guy... except he's not, when we meet him. Who's mentally ill... except he's doing okay, when we meet him. Who's been in prison countless times. Who the system failed... except it didn't, because somebody who wasn't himself had to get him out of that parking garage. Stuart and Alexander both live in Oxford, where Alex is a... writer? Social activist? Shelter worker? All at the same time. A little about Stuart:

Stuart cannot have a driving licence. There are already so many penalty points lined up in police stations waiting to be put on that licence the moment the licence comes into existence that, even if such a licence ever were to exist, it would at one and the same time be impossible for it to exist. Only Stuart could manage to give his relationship with vehicle documentation a flavour of quantum mechanics.

Stuart is curious and opinionated and educated and insanely disfunctional. There are so many disparate parts and qualifications, it's almost impossible to figure out how the whole thing works. Which is what Alexander is trying to work out.

Sour with disapproval, a plump man with bookshelf glasses accuses Stuart of wanting to legalise heroin.
'No, sir, just cannabis. Smack means more junkies and less long-term economic production.'
Does the man know 'how many detox beds there is in Oxford for all them junkies? Two, sir. And half the time when they've been in them beds for five or six days they're put straight back into the situation they were in before they went there. They fall off the wagon as quick as they got on the wagon. Where, the tax off puff would actually pay for all the treatment programmes and policing for heroin addiction. Legalise cannabis but come down like a ton of bricks on the class As.'
When I come back after fifteen minutes, Stuart and the man with the glasses are having an amiable conversation about South American politics.

It's just that Stuart has these tendencies toward violence... and is so unstable...
'If you got a picture of a sixth-form college now,' he concludes sentimentally, 'you'd be lucky if you found two people who didn't look exactly the same as everyone else. But in them days it wasn't boring and materialistic, like today.'
'Then you'd get together and beat the hell out of each other?'
'Yeah.'(less)

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Jan 07, 2008 minnie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: non-fiction

This biography tells the life story of Stuart Shorter, a homeless knife wielding nutter, from the present back to his childhood, to explain how he went from being a happy go lucky little boy to a homeless drug addict. I loved this book, but read it with a sense of foreboding, knowing that it was going to go back to some horrible events in his childhood , and it does. The book jumps back and forth quite a bit, some of it is funny as Stuart tells of his various stints in prisons all over England,...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Bettie marked it as to-read

Recommended to Bettie by: MBP

Shelves: film-only

To watch...

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Apr 07, 2008 Bookmaniac70 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Bookmaniac70 by: JPix

It was an unusual book. The phenomenon of homelessness has been always a mystery to me;I have been always asking myself how it happens,is it only poverty or something else; why people used to living in the streets,cannot return their lives to normal even if given the opportunity? The book says a lot about all these things but also,it doesn`t and can`t answer all the questions.

First of all,"Stuart" is a precious document of a human life. It is also a valuable document on how homeless people thin...more

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Aug 14, 2007 Sarah Watt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: literally everyone

This is a highly original and captivating memoir which has captured the hearts of readers everywhere. "Stuart, A Life Backwards", is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator ('a middle class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander') and a chaotic, knife-wielding beggar whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison. Interwoven into this, is Stuart's confession: the story of his life, told backwards. With h...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Sean O'Reilly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookcrossing

I knew nothing at all about this book or it's author so I came to it without any preconceptions. I have to say that it doesn't offer a promising start with Stuart, the subject of the book, proclaiming that it is 'bollocks boring'. To be fair he is referring to a draft and not the finished article. Even so it must be a confident author who opens his book with such a negative critique.

At this stage Stuart suggests to Masters that he writes his lifestory 'backwards' and from there the book unfolds....more

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Aug 19, 2012 Zoë Clapperton rated it 4 of 5 stars

The story of Stuart Shorter is the story of a person nobody wants to know- the homeless 'nutter', the beggar, the addict, the offender. Nobody that is, except, for reasons that aren't at first clear even to him, Alexander Masters, a hostel worker who stumbles across Stuart begging in Cambridge. Their relationship is unique in literature, one is an illiterate yob and the other is an ex-boarding-school pupil and do-gooder. Somehow they immediately connect and as their touching relationship unfolds...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Lucy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I’ve just finished this book, and honestly I’m so ineloquent with words I’m not going to even try and write a proper review, I could never do it any justice or hope to explain all the little thoughts about life it made me have - but I want everyone to read it.

It was incredibly sad, insightful, funny, heart warming and disturbing. I know Stuart had done some terrible things in his short life, that he was incredibly damaged but I thought he was also extremely charismatic and intellegent, a beautif...more

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Nov 16, 2011 Jordan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: brit-lit, non-fiction

"Stuart: A Life Backwards," the biography of a Cambridge homeless man could also go by the title "Stuart: A Life Unanswered." Alexander Masters, or as his subject Stuart Shorter calls him, "middle class c***," narrates the life story of a man most of us would literally step over on the street, with no overt solution on how he may be rescued from his semi-chosen state. Unlike most of biographical heroes, Stuart's life isn't notable for what he's done, but more for the continuously terrible things...more "Stuart: A Life Backwards," the biography of a Cambridge homeless man could also go by the title "Stuart: A Life Unanswered." Alexander Masters, or as his subject Stuart Shorter calls him, "middle class c***," narrates the life story of a man most of us would literally step over on the street, with no overt solution on how he may be rescued from his semi-chosen state. Unlike most of biographical heroes, Stuart's life isn't notable for what he's done, but more for the continuously terrible things that have been done to him, and how he still carries on with humor, intelligence and the occasional suicide attempt. The story, as hinted by its title, is told backwards, "like what Tom Clancy writes," as Stuart puts it. The intent is to trace to the origin of how Stuart's life devolved from childhood innocence to a cycle of prison sentences and sociopathic assaults ending, or rather beginning according to the book's structure, with Stuart being hit and killed by the 11.15 train.

The prospect of reading a book about a homeless sociopath may seem like an unappealing sob story waiting to be suffered through, but Masters approaches the subject with enough sarcasm and humor that the large majority of the book is quite hilarious. He never pretends to be a savant of the homeless. He frequently puts in commentary showing his internal aggravation at the homeless community, "I love the police. I wish we lived in a police state," and admirably befriends Stuart while never attempting to force him to change his life habits. But given that he's the subject of the book, the ultimate humor and emotionality of the piece falls onto Stuart's peculiar habits. His recipe for 'Convict Curry,' his detailed explanations of car thievery and his homemade 'F*CK' arm tattoo all contribute to a life picture of a

For all its humor and the touchingly developed friendship between biographer and subject, "Stuart: A Life Backwards" is not without emotional catharsis. Masters includes primary and secondarily researched material about the broken system of benefits around the homeless, one that does nothing to push for autonomy. No real solutions are given, and with all the hardships in Stuart's life, particularly as the more disturbing anecdotes of his childhood abuse arise, a sense of helplessness in activism pervades the biography. Other than Stuart's personal value on "the day I discovered violence," even he realizes that it wasn't a single act or inequity that led him to his current state, but a continuing string of bad luck, systemic failures and medical trauma that led him to the streets. (less)

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May 12, 2010 Paula rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book will stay with me for a long. Having worked with homeless individuals over the past ten years, a lot of the book was familiar to me in terms of facts and figures, the book did highlight another fact I am very aware of ~ everyone has their own story and not so poignant as a person who lives on the street, you are surprised to read that some people choose the street, why? Because in some ways, it is theirs, they are away from the pain in their lives but by living on the streets they expe...more This book will stay with me for a long. Having worked with homeless individuals over the past ten years, a lot of the book was familiar to me in terms of facts and figures, the book did highlight another fact I am very aware of ~ everyone has their own story and not so poignant as a person who lives on the street, you are surprised to read that some people choose the street, why? Because in some ways, it is theirs, they are away from the pain in their lives but by living on the streets they experience a new pain, it is unfortunately a vicious circle and there is so many people working in the background to help as people as possible.

The author of the book Alexander Masters met Stuart Shorter on the streets, Stuart’s reputation preceeds him, he was known as ‘Knife man Dan’, ‘that mad b*****d on level D’ but underneath there is a different side to Stuart, an astute, intelligent side which comes to light following the arrests and subsequent unjustly imprisonment of Ruth Wyner and John Brock, homeless workers for ‘knowingly allowing’ the supply of heroin, Ruth, John and the rest of the workers did as much as they could, informing the police, etc but nothing changed, individuals were still dealing drugs.
Stuart and Alexander become involved in the campaign to free Ruth and John, with Stuart insights and experience he helps more than he realises, for the first time in his life, Stuart is needed.

There is nothing nice about Stuart’s life, he decided that his story should be told backwards because he wanted the reader to see that he was not always the way he was, that at one point, he had been a happy child. The book explores Stuart’s life in a positive but respectful manner, there are issues in Stuart’s life that are very significant (he was sexually abused by his brother and his babysitter, school teachers), they are mentioned to highlight Stuart’s problems but they are not described, which I found easier to cope with to be honest. Stuart also suffered from muscular dystrophy but nothing about his life is used as an excuse by Stuart, he rolls with the punches, he faces his daily demons.

Stuart’s life was an eye opener, I learned from it and I think other readers will too, you will laugh, you will cry.

Unfortunately Stuart never saw the finished book, he died at the age of 33 years old on the 6th July 2002 after being hit by a train, and the jury returned an ‘open verdict’(less)

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Jun 10, 2009 S. Wilson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Stuart, the focus of Alexander Masters' book, is as enigmatic and polarizing as real people tend to get. There is a reason that Masters introduces us to Stuart now, rather than beginning at the childhood that spawned this creature.

Stuart is akin to a horrific train wreck that you can not tear your eyes away from; he is scary and depressing, repulsive and untantalizing, yet somehow silumtaneously mesmerizing and endearing. You wouldn't want to share an elevator or a dark alley with this character...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Jayne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, biography, books-everyone-should-read, favorites, nonfiction

Having spent most of my life working in the human services field, this book really gave me a lot to think about. Then again, it would have done that no matter what. For years I tried so hard not to let myself become jaded or cynical about the clients I worked with, realizing that the behavior I witnessed and the personal details I knew about probably only scratched the surfaces of the sum total of their lives' experiences (full admission: ultimately, I failed). This book delves deep beneath surf...more

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May 29, 2012 Sophie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not usually the sort of person to read biographies, but this just captivated me. From this book I have learned so much about the lives of people like stuart, who we alienate from society so much. That alone should be a good reason for anyone to read this book. Stuart is a great person: logical, clever and funny, and it's enjoyable to 'be' around him in this book, which makes me all the more sympathetic towards his situation and life's events, which have stopped him from being and excellent p...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Leslie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, issues-and-ideas, creative-nonfiction

Have you ever walked past a street person and wondered how he or she got there? Every one of them has a story, but it's a story we'd rather ignore, just as we'd rather ignore them. Masters gives us the story of one man and, through it, a glimpse into a damaged life. Stuart is appallingly damaged, and the explanation for how he got to where he ended up--addicted to multiple substances, chaotic, unstable, violent, and unpredictable--is sad and awful. Masters does not romanticise Stuart or show him...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Bettielee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Warning: I use language in this review.

I don't know how to sum this up. It's not the typical book I read, but then again, this isn't a typical biography. Most biographers hold their subjects at arm's length. But Stuart (the subject) and Alexander (the writer) are buddies, and not only is Alexander in the book, but Stuart is reading it along with you. The first line is "Stuart does not like the manuscript." As a matter of fact, "It's bollocks boring." Which I think in American is "this shit suck...more Warning: I use language in this review.

I don't know how to sum this up. It's not the typical book I read, but then again, this isn't a typical biography. Most biographers hold their subjects at arm's length. But Stuart (the subject) and Alexander (the writer) are buddies, and not only is Alexander in the book, but Stuart is reading it along with you. The first line is "Stuart does not like the manuscript." As a matter of fact, "It's bollocks boring." Which I think in American is "this shit sucks". Stuart wants his autobiography to be a bestseller, "Like what Tom Clancy writes." So Alexander starts over. And he takes Stuart's advice, to write it backwards, to make it interesting.

After all, Stuart is not your typical subject for a biography. Alexander met Stuart, drunk, begging on the streets of Cambridge. Then again, at a meeting about two social workers who have been arrested because homeless were dealing drugs in a shelter. It is where their friendship begins. Stuart is what Alexander calls "a chaotic": a violent, homeless junkie, an alcoholic, a victim of sexual abuse, a mental patient, a criminal, and a sufferer of muscular dystrophy and self-harm. I saw the movie and watched an interview with Tom Hardy, who played Stuart. He said it perfectly. When it comes to Stuart, there are a lot of gongs to ring. But despite all the crime, the life on the street, the time in mental health or prison facilities, Stuart takes his son to task for having a rude message on his outgoing answering machine. He wants him to go to business school. He believes politeness is important. He is an advocate for the homeless (being one, who better to speak for them than a member of that fraternity) and he tries to teach the "middle class" things they just don't understand about helping the homeless: how the increase of puppies and the limited space for homeless with pets leads to increased deaths during winter, the limited storage space in jail, and how to make convict curry. He tries to make his suicide attempts look like murders or accidents because his brother committed suicide and he doesn't want his mother to go through that again. In other words, he's a conscientious chaotic.

Despite Stuart's violent temper, clashes with police, and penchant for knives, Alexander repeatedly refers to him as gentle and soft-spoken, insists that he has no fear of Stuart at all. They drink together, go shopping for furniture, and Alexander accompanies him to court cases. Alexander even takes Stuart into the country to visit friends. All the while, he listens to Stuart's story, for the book, and tries to show you what Stuart was, and then how he got that way.

Stuart is an enigma. I don't know how to sum up this book. How do you sum up a life? I don't think you do. I think you just read Alexander's attempt - and it took a whole book. A very engaging, well written, funny, intense, sad, heartbreaking, enlightening and occasionally dirty, book. I highly recommend it. I've always said that is one of the best things about a book. But the very best thing you can say is that at the end of the day, I'M glad I read it.(less)

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Aug 28, 2009 Kirsten rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I would urge most people I know to read this book. It was not new to me that people who go through abuse and difficult childhoods have a tendance to become pretty messed-up adults. However this book showed day-to-day details, a specific individual story, and gave - finally - a face to it. It made me hate humans and what they are capable of but then again I'm a cynical bastard so I always have done anyway. It was also personally interesting for me that this whole story took place in a town at a t...more

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May 10, 2010 Suzanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Write it like a murder mystery...What killed the boy I was?" That's what Stuart Shorter asked, and that's what Alexander Masters did. Psychopath, activist, junkie, Stuart's life is at turns harrowing and darkly comic. Masters does not romanticize Stuart's personality or actions. Over the course of the years they spent working on Shorter's life story, Masters often reaches a point of exasperation with his friend, but each time this happens, he is confronted by the fallibility of his own assumpti...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

An impressive first book, as attested to by the numerous blurbs adorning the inside and outside covers. Stuart, the eponymous lead, is a homeless person, and the book begins with him at large in the present day before it begins to trace his life back to childhood in an effort to piece together why his life unravelled.
The author has hit a very nice tone of voice to tell the tale. He comes across as a self-depreciating middle-class, somewhat hand-wringing liberal, who is often the target of Stuart...more

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Jun 13, 2011 Russell George rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Strange how you come across some books. About a year ago, on the way home from the funeral of one of my closest friends, we stopped off at the family home of the girl who was giving me a lift. Her Mum was reading this book, and somehow I knew I also wanted to read it. It wasn’t until I picked it up last week that I realised it was a biography of a homeless man from Cambridge. Stuart Shorter is a ‘chaotic’, oddly lucid yet constantly unpredictable, and the book is as much about how the author eek...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, biography, alcoholism, british

Fascinating, cleverly written, and heartbreaking. The author writes about his acquaintance (and later friend) Stuart - a chronically homeless, alcoholic, mentally ill man. Masters tries to figure out how Stuart came to be in the gutter of society, and looks at his past and from where he came. As Stuart's history comes to light, it becomes horrifyingly clear that he was subjected to terrible abuse and neglect and no one came to his rescue despite his pleas for help. Stuart's is a story about how...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Sally McRogerson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A reading group book which makes reading groups worthwhile!!

Stuart Shorter's life as told in the most quirky fashion to the author. I absolutely loved it and didn't want to put it down! I have met many people like Stuart and wondered how they became the people that they are, which is quite lovable (mainly!) if you can deal with the chaos of which their lives consist. This deals delightfully with so many issues; homelessness, addiction, the shite which is the mental health care system in the UK,...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Venuskitten rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 30, 2011 Juliajuliah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In Stuart: a life backwards Alexander Masters recounts the life of a man who lived a chaotic – and short – life. He starts at the end and works backwards, revealing how a considerate young boy grew up to be a homeless, addicted, psychotic criminal.

“If his own life were not still so disordered, he could make good money explaining to parents what makes children turn into authority despising delinquents” says the author. By drawing alongside him and unpacking Stuart’s life, Masters manages to do e...more

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Oct 16, 2010 Noir rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 09, 2012 Tara Wood rated it 5 of 5 stars

I will admit, I saw the film first. Benedict Cumberbatch. ‘Nuff said. But I was so captivated by the story of Stuart Shorter and his subsequent portrayal by Tom Hardy (he was ace!), that I had to read the book.

This is a wonderful book. Alexander Masters captures the essence of Stuart in a way that is compelling and heartbreaking all at the same time. It is the story of a young man so embroiled in pain and tragedy, yet has such a profound outlook on life. I ached for Stuart, Alexander, and Stuart...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Alexander Masters successfully manages to humanize the enigmatic Stuart. His personality is random enough and many of his faults considerable enough that a less-skilled observer might have labored to create empathy for__and even bring humor and life to__such a character. The recent and quite public outrage over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces calls into question Masters's pithier dialogues with Stuart, and critic Carolyn See takes issue with the author's judgment in his handling of the sub

...more

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Apr 01, 2011 Elena Foulkes rated it 5 of 5 stars

This may not be a perfect book, but both the story and the writing made a huge impression on me. I like stories, but I don't normally go for the "my horrific past/abusive parents/etc" genre. This was a pretty dismal story, at times told with compassion, at others with amusing self-awareness on the part of the author/narrator, and presented in an original way, which the author credits his biographee with giving him the idea for. It works. It's compelling, moving, gripping, entertaining. The autho...more

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Apr 22, 2009 Cynthea rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: nypl

i hated this book. i gave it TWO stars, because well, stuart and alexander shouldn't be punished because i work in the social services field w/ mentally ill chemically addicted offenders. it is a tough book to read - it is not funny (or, at least i didn't find it funny anywhere as other reviewers have), the lack of any british slang translation makes other things really difficult, and i mean come on, how much of a train wreck of a life can you read without getting really depressed?

i work with th...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: stockroom

Notes for a proper review.

Occasionally its a newspaper review. And it was with this one. Its a story that needs to be told so people can know that those who we turn our back on are equally remarkable people; that the Stuarts of this world have been broken by this world.
Many of us have issues in our lives that have brought us closer to the edge. Few of us could have coped better than Stuart did with the issues in his life.
The book is often to be found in English classrooms where sensitive sixth f...more

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Alexander Masters is an author and screenwriter. He is the son of authors Dexter Masters and Joan Brady.

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Quotes from Stuart: A Life Backwards

“Ruth once told me when I went to visit her at HMP Highpoint that it is surprising how much of what you imagine to be your innate sense of self actually comes from things that aren't one's self at all: people's reactions to the blouse you wear, the respectfulness of your family, the attentiveness of your friends, their approval of the pictures in your living room, the neatness of your lawn, the way people whisper your name. It is these exhibitions of yourself, as reflected in the people whom you meet, which give you comfort and your identity. Take them away, be put in a tiny room, and called by a number, and you begin to vanish.” — 8 people liked it

“For a moment, I believe, there was a stillness. A shocking realization by all things - beetles, dormice, the spiders spinning their webs in the moonlight, even the hot metal of the tracks and the wind in the trees - that Death had just shrieked past like a stinking black eagle and made off with a remarkable man.” — 6 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/103525.Stuart?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1171498553l/103525.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/103525.Stuart?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters[/url]

Stuart: A Life Backwards

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