Handstands in the Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival by Janey Godley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Our newest street book group read, the late Glaswegian comedienne Janey Godley’s autobiography. I listened to the audio version, narrated by the author, which I would say is the only way to do it.

She recounts her upbringing in Shettleston, a tough district in Glasgow’s East End, her survival of deprivation, discrimination and sexual abuse, her coming of age and marriage into a gangster family, and her life as a young mother running a hard-drinking corner bar with its backcloth of street fighting, hard drugs and prostitution.

On the one hand the tale is a bottomless pit of despair, domestic violence and manipulation, but on the other a beacon of hope, of ephemeral joy found in chronic adversity, and incalculable fortitude.

Janey Godley’s grippingly honest narration is nothing short of brilliant, and her talent for the Glasgow vernacular makes the graphic profanity that peppers the dialogue sound not in the least gratuitous. (But it does contain more swear words than any other book I have read.)




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