Not unlike Queenan, I read my way into the middle class. I am familiar with a lot of the prejudices and knee-jerk attitudes he describes. I was much, much luckier than he, inasmuch as both my parents loved me and did their level best for me. Like him, I adore the English language in all its fearsome glory, and endeavor to use it in a manner befitting its incandescent variety.

Unlike Queenan, I'm not an unreconstructed, condescending prick.

This memoir was grueling. The horror that was Queenan's childhood is limned here in letters of fire. The reaction to that childhood is still happening, and it's uncomfortable to witness. There's enough backlash and bitterness to last several lifetimes here- and not without justification. His dad was a right bastard, make no mistake about it. Queenan's claims to have moved beyond his childhood ring hollow in the face of the evidence presented here, though. I think he's doing well to have merely survived.