Pig Iron by Ben Myers

Pig Iron

Ben Myers

Featuring a memorable voice in John-John, a traveller seeking his own identity, wanting to shake off the legacy of his violent upbringing, Pig Iron will linger with you for some time. It is a story with a perverse beauty, told often with wit amidst the brutality of the hostile estate where John-John finds himself.

Extract
The Nook is humming with tension like a railway track when a train is coming.
There's fresh glass on the road, more cubed confetti to crunch between me warm tyres and the summer-softened asphalt.
The sun is high and business is good. People are out in the streets drinking and nattering, scheming little clusters of them. The season is still a novelty as the sun blazes down on pale bodies that slouch and bask like lazy cats. Even the smackheads have slowed their morning scuttle to a more leisurely clip.
Mind, it won't last of course. It'll all change later, after dark, when the sun's gone down and the birds are roosting and the booze has turned bad.
Parallels
  • Runt by Niall Griffiths
  • God's Own Country by Ross Raisin
Borrow this book
Violence
Explicit sexual content