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Pig Iron
Pig Iron is the story of John-John, a young man wrestling with the legacy of brutality left by his bare-knuckle boxer father, King of the Gypsies, Mac Wisdom. His new job as an ice cream man should offer freedom, but instead pulls John-John into the dark recesses of a north-east town where his family name is mud.
As he attempts to trade prejudice, parole officers and local gangs for his ‘green cathedral’ - the rural landscape in which he seeks solace - Mac’s rise and bloody downfall threatens to engulf John-John’s present.
A far cry from the recent media stereotyping of travellers, Pig Iron is a sensitive portrayal of Britain’s most marginalised and misunderstood ethnic group. More than anything, it is about the redemptive power of nature and the landscape of post-industrial northern England.
Pig Iron is the story of a traveller who hasn’t travelled; a young man fighting for his surname and his very survival.
As he attempts to trade prejudice, parole officers and local gangs for his ‘green cathedral’ - the rural landscape in which he seeks solace - Mac’s rise and bloody downfall threatens to engulf John-John’s present.
A far cry from the recent media stereotyping of travellers, Pig Iron is a sensitive portrayal of Britain’s most marginalised and misunderstood ethnic group. More than anything, it is about the redemptive power of nature and the landscape of post-industrial northern England.
Pig Iron is the story of a traveller who hasn’t travelled; a young man fighting for his surname and his very survival.
282 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2012
48 people are currently reading
1471 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Myers
35 books1,201 followersBenjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976.
He is an award-winning author and journalist whose recent novel Cuddy (2023) won the Goldsmiths Prize.
His first short story collection, Male Tears, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
His novel The Offing was published by Bloomsbury in 2019 and is a best-seller in Germany. It was serialised by Radio 4's Book At Bedtime and Radio 2 Book club choice. It is being developed for stage and has been optioned for film.
The non-fiction book Under The Rock, was shortlisted for The Portico Prize For Literature in 2020.
Recipient of the Roger Deakin Award and first published by Bluemoose Books, Myers' novel The Gallows Pole was published to acclaim in 2017 and was winner of the Walter Scott Prize 2018 - the world's largest prize for historical fiction. It has been published in the US by Third Man Books and in 2023 was adapted by director Shane Meadows for the BBC/A24.
The Gallows Pole was re-issued by Bloomsbury, alongside previous titles Beastings and Pig Iron.
Several of Myers' novels have been released as audiobooks, read by actor Ralph Ineson.
Turning Blue (2016) was described as a "folk crime" novel, and praised by writers including Val McDermid. A sequel These Darkening Days followed in 2017.
His novel Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize For Literature, was the recipient of the Northern Writers’ Award and longlisted for a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 2015. Widely acclaimed, it featured on several end of year lists, and was chosen by Robert Macfarlane in The Big Issue as one of his books of 2014.
Pig Iron (2012) was the winner of the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize and runner-up in The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. A controversial combination of biography and novel, Richard (2010) was a bestseller and chosen as a Sunday Times book of the year.
Myers’ short story ‘The Folk Song Singer’ was awarded the Tom-Gallon Prize in 2014 by the Society Of Authors and published by Galley Beggar Press. His short stories and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies.
As a journalist he has written about the arts and nature for publications including New Statesman, The Guardian, The Spectator, NME, Mojo, Time Out, New Scientist, Caught By The River, The Morning Star, Vice, The Quietus, Melody Maker and numerous others.
He currently lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, UK.
He is an award-winning author and journalist whose recent novel Cuddy (2023) won the Goldsmiths Prize.
His first short story collection, Male Tears, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
His novel The Offing was published by Bloomsbury in 2019 and is a best-seller in Germany. It was serialised by Radio 4's Book At Bedtime and Radio 2 Book club choice. It is being developed for stage and has been optioned for film.
The non-fiction book Under The Rock, was shortlisted for The Portico Prize For Literature in 2020.
Recipient of the Roger Deakin Award and first published by Bluemoose Books, Myers' novel The Gallows Pole was published to acclaim in 2017 and was winner of the Walter Scott Prize 2018 - the world's largest prize for historical fiction. It has been published in the US by Third Man Books and in 2023 was adapted by director Shane Meadows for the BBC/A24.
The Gallows Pole was re-issued by Bloomsbury, alongside previous titles Beastings and Pig Iron.
Several of Myers' novels have been released as audiobooks, read by actor Ralph Ineson.
Turning Blue (2016) was described as a "folk crime" novel, and praised by writers including Val McDermid. A sequel These Darkening Days followed in 2017.
His novel Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize For Literature, was the recipient of the Northern Writers’ Award and longlisted for a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 2015. Widely acclaimed, it featured on several end of year lists, and was chosen by Robert Macfarlane in The Big Issue as one of his books of 2014.
Pig Iron (2012) was the winner of the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize and runner-up in The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. A controversial combination of biography and novel, Richard (2010) was a bestseller and chosen as a Sunday Times book of the year.
Myers’ short story ‘The Folk Song Singer’ was awarded the Tom-Gallon Prize in 2014 by the Society Of Authors and published by Galley Beggar Press. His short stories and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies.
As a journalist he has written about the arts and nature for publications including New Statesman, The Guardian, The Spectator, NME, Mojo, Time Out, New Scientist, Caught By The River, The Morning Star, Vice, The Quietus, Melody Maker and numerous others.
He currently lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, UK.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 184 reviews
March 28, 2019
Myers' 2017 novel The Gallows Pole was very impressive, so I was keen to explore Myers' earlier fiction. Beastings was very different, but this one has more elements in common - it is a very male story full of violence but as always with Myers a love of nature is never far from the surface.
The three novels are set in different parts of Northern England - The Gallows Pole in Myers' adopted home in the Calder Valley, Beastings in the Lake District and Pig Iron in and around Newcastle (Myers grew up in County Durham).
The narrator John-John Wisdom is the son of a famous gypsy prize fighter, whose shadow dominates the story. It is clear from very early on that John-John has just been released from jail for his part in his father's murder, which becomes increasingly justifiable the more we learn about the way he treated his family. John-John is not a natural fighter, preferring to seek solace in the natural world and his "green cathedral", but his father's legacy and his work selling ice creams for a man involved with local gangs suck him in to confrontations.
John-John's account switches between the vernacular (a mixture of North Eastern dialect and Romany) and more literary descriptive passages - the latter are explained by his voracious reading in prison.
This is quite a confrontational book, and is not always a comfortable read, but as always Myers descriptive powers and imagination make it worth reading.
The three novels are set in different parts of Northern England - The Gallows Pole in Myers' adopted home in the Calder Valley, Beastings in the Lake District and Pig Iron in and around Newcastle (Myers grew up in County Durham).
The narrator John-John Wisdom is the son of a famous gypsy prize fighter, whose shadow dominates the story. It is clear from very early on that John-John has just been released from jail for his part in his father's murder, which becomes increasingly justifiable the more we learn about the way he treated his family. John-John is not a natural fighter, preferring to seek solace in the natural world and his "green cathedral", but his father's legacy and his work selling ice creams for a man involved with local gangs suck him in to confrontations.
John-John's account switches between the vernacular (a mixture of North Eastern dialect and Romany) and more literary descriptive passages - the latter are explained by his voracious reading in prison.
This is quite a confrontational book, and is not always a comfortable read, but as always Myers descriptive powers and imagination make it worth reading.
March 31, 2025
An eye for an eye or.......?
In the story, someone is talking to John John about freedom, and he asks, "Freedom.....What freedom?" We tend to forget that all of us are free - free to make choices, free to create a narrative on our own story and to change that narrative if necessary. Our narrative then helps our choices when we come to respond to what happens to us or when we choose to act towards a new path.
Myers builds a sense of foreboding about the choices being made because I got so immediately invested in John John's story, and I so wanted the very best for him. He puts him against a brutal story that does not give any leeway. So John John's hero journey is harrowing, to say the least, and his triumphs filled me with joy. His ability to see beauty in nature around him and to grab on to that and build on that is uplifting.
In the story, someone is talking to John John about freedom, and he asks, "Freedom.....What freedom?" We tend to forget that all of us are free - free to make choices, free to create a narrative on our own story and to change that narrative if necessary. Our narrative then helps our choices when we come to respond to what happens to us or when we choose to act towards a new path.
Myers builds a sense of foreboding about the choices being made because I got so immediately invested in John John's story, and I so wanted the very best for him. He puts him against a brutal story that does not give any leeway. So John John's hero journey is harrowing, to say the least, and his triumphs filled me with joy. His ability to see beauty in nature around him and to grab on to that and build on that is uplifting.
February 28, 2013
I make a point of never including spoilers in reviews. In the case of 'Pig Iron' by Ben Myers, that means that I can hardly mention any event from the narrative at all, because everything, no matter how apparently disparate at the beginning, turns out to be woven into one, unified strand. Since I can't mention anything that happens, I will have to tell you about voices, places, and themes.
You could pick many controlling ideas out of this book, not because it is confused about itself, but because it touches many universal themes, which means that different readers will derive different things from it. To me, this book is about how violence begets violence, which is a terrible thing. The main character came across to me as philosophical, contemplative, and learned, despite having had no formal education. I have been to four universities, and I empathised with John-John because he has the same belief as me that you have to outthink your opponent first in order to outfight him. John-John is what I would call an Epicurean, in the philosophical sense of the word: he believes that the way to a happy and fulfilled life is through learning to enjoy simple pleasures.
Practically everything that happens to John-John, or has ever happened to him, is bad, or malicious, or unfortunate. It is a measure of the accomplishment of Ben Myers as a writer that he manages to create an uplifting story out of such seemingly oppressive material.
The story is told alternately by two narrators: John-John himself, and Vancy, John-John's mother. John-John speaks in the first person and the present tense. Vancy speaks in the past tense. I have asked Michael Stewart to tell me what you call the narrative mode that Vancy uses. It might be first person direct address, but sometimes it seems almost like third person omniscient. The gap between what John-John talks about, and what Vancy talks about, gets smaller and smaller, in terms of both time and causal relationship, until they are both telling the same story. The way this is resolved is very adeptly handled, and does the job that good story-tellers are supposed to do: to make seemingly unrelated things connect, in a plausible way.
John-John, who has more lines that Vancy, speaks in dialect. The fact that I finished this book quickly without the dialect annoying me or getting in the way of the story is an indication of the consistency in the way the dialect is used, and also the page-turning quality of the story. John-John uses dozens of dialect words that I had never seen before. These include "dimp" (cigarette butt), "scut" (anus), and "povvy" (disreputable, impoverished). None of these are explained. There is no glossary and no foot-notes. The reader gets the meaning from the context.
I have decided to rate this book 5 stars. This is because of the economy of the narrative: everything that is there is so for a reason, even if takes nearly to the last page for that to become apparent. It is also because of the way the book’s hopeful message arises unexpectedly out of a repulsive slime of violence, prejudice, cruelty, betrayal, exploitation and injustice.
You could pick many controlling ideas out of this book, not because it is confused about itself, but because it touches many universal themes, which means that different readers will derive different things from it. To me, this book is about how violence begets violence, which is a terrible thing. The main character came across to me as philosophical, contemplative, and learned, despite having had no formal education. I have been to four universities, and I empathised with John-John because he has the same belief as me that you have to outthink your opponent first in order to outfight him. John-John is what I would call an Epicurean, in the philosophical sense of the word: he believes that the way to a happy and fulfilled life is through learning to enjoy simple pleasures.
Practically everything that happens to John-John, or has ever happened to him, is bad, or malicious, or unfortunate. It is a measure of the accomplishment of Ben Myers as a writer that he manages to create an uplifting story out of such seemingly oppressive material.
The story is told alternately by two narrators: John-John himself, and Vancy, John-John's mother. John-John speaks in the first person and the present tense. Vancy speaks in the past tense. I have asked Michael Stewart to tell me what you call the narrative mode that Vancy uses. It might be first person direct address, but sometimes it seems almost like third person omniscient. The gap between what John-John talks about, and what Vancy talks about, gets smaller and smaller, in terms of both time and causal relationship, until they are both telling the same story. The way this is resolved is very adeptly handled, and does the job that good story-tellers are supposed to do: to make seemingly unrelated things connect, in a plausible way.
John-John, who has more lines that Vancy, speaks in dialect. The fact that I finished this book quickly without the dialect annoying me or getting in the way of the story is an indication of the consistency in the way the dialect is used, and also the page-turning quality of the story. John-John uses dozens of dialect words that I had never seen before. These include "dimp" (cigarette butt), "scut" (anus), and "povvy" (disreputable, impoverished). None of these are explained. There is no glossary and no foot-notes. The reader gets the meaning from the context.
I have decided to rate this book 5 stars. This is because of the economy of the narrative: everything that is there is so for a reason, even if takes nearly to the last page for that to become apparent. It is also because of the way the book’s hopeful message arises unexpectedly out of a repulsive slime of violence, prejudice, cruelty, betrayal, exploitation and injustice.
February 12, 2018
John-John Wisdom is a Traveller (aka "gypsies" or "pikers"), a young man of about 20, recently released from a five-year stint in a juvenile detention facility for a crime that we'll learn more about as the book progresses. He relates his own story in the first person in a northern English vernacular, and his travails as he attempts to stick to the straight and narrow are paralleled by his mother's reminiscences of John-John's father, brutish, tough-as-pig-iron bareknuckle boxer Mac Wisdom. John-John is a winning character, small and wiry, yet with his father's toughness, a scrapper, but possessing wit, intelligence, and few illusions about life, which he knows full well he is stuck on the shit end of. On parole, he merely wants to stay out of trouble and earn enough money driving an ice cream truck to return to the countryside where he was raised and start over, but of course things are never that easy. I admit that does seem rather cliched, a trope we've seen in movies and books umpteen times before, but Pig Iron is elevated by terrific, terse prose and characters, and a very well-executed parallel narrative structure.
The alternating narrative between John-John and his mother (who may or may not be talking directly to J0hn-John) really made it for me. Both narratives are compelling on their own, but it is the way they interrelate and play off each other that makes the novel come together as a cohesive whole, and the results are riveting. It's a brutal book at times—few punches are pulled either literally or figuratively—but absorbing and rewarding. Benjamin Myers is a writer to watch.
The alternating narrative between John-John and his mother (who may or may not be talking directly to J0hn-John) really made it for me. Both narratives are compelling on their own, but it is the way they interrelate and play off each other that makes the novel come together as a cohesive whole, and the results are riveting. It's a brutal book at times—few punches are pulled either literally or figuratively—but absorbing and rewarding. Benjamin Myers is a writer to watch.
June 7, 2025
“I’m sick of it all, me. Sick of running, sick of the guilt that’s like a hand round your throat in the night, when you’re all alone and exposed in the darkness, and there’s just you and the knowledge of what you’ve done. You carry it inside you, this fear of your own dark potential. You carry it in your chest and you carry it in your blood.” p3
Pig Iron is a poignant and sobering reflection, retelling and out working of lives imprinted by brutality, domestic violence that ultimately impacts trajectories of all connected with it.
There are two narratives that weave around each other throughout Pig Iron. A narrative in the present day as told through the eyes of John-John Wisdom and another that transports the reader to the recent past, building a story that surrounds the Wisdom family and helps the reader bring past and present together.
I think what stands out so strongly in Pig Iron is the influence that a father can have on the trajectory of his children and his family. There are so many elements to this story that beg to be explored in so many ways. Prejudice, family relations, masculinity and representations of men, class structures and the gypsy culture in England, and oppression of women.
Mac Wisdom is John-John’s dad, and to be honest is the underpinning main character in the whole book. The legacy he leaves and what he passes down is processed on each page and as the reader, I was mesmerised by his influence and pivotal role. No other character was untouched by him in some way and John-John is a by-product in more ways than one of the power wielded by this man.
Pig Iron is a story of the stuff that layers together to make a person who he or she is. What he or she is born into, how this is processed and how this influences who or what we become and the choices and decisions we make as we navigate our pathway through life. What has begotten us does not necessarily dictate exactly who we become.
“I’m never going on the back foot. Nor. Never. I look down once more and there in the still silence of dawn I can see a movement. A tiny movement. It’s one leaf trembling on a tree. One leaf among thousands. Among millions. An individual, doing his own thing.” p282
Pig Iron is a poignant and sobering reflection, retelling and out working of lives imprinted by brutality, domestic violence that ultimately impacts trajectories of all connected with it.
There are two narratives that weave around each other throughout Pig Iron. A narrative in the present day as told through the eyes of John-John Wisdom and another that transports the reader to the recent past, building a story that surrounds the Wisdom family and helps the reader bring past and present together.
I think what stands out so strongly in Pig Iron is the influence that a father can have on the trajectory of his children and his family. There are so many elements to this story that beg to be explored in so many ways. Prejudice, family relations, masculinity and representations of men, class structures and the gypsy culture in England, and oppression of women.
Mac Wisdom is John-John’s dad, and to be honest is the underpinning main character in the whole book. The legacy he leaves and what he passes down is processed on each page and as the reader, I was mesmerised by his influence and pivotal role. No other character was untouched by him in some way and John-John is a by-product in more ways than one of the power wielded by this man.
Pig Iron is a story of the stuff that layers together to make a person who he or she is. What he or she is born into, how this is processed and how this influences who or what we become and the choices and decisions we make as we navigate our pathway through life. What has begotten us does not necessarily dictate exactly who we become.
“I’m never going on the back foot. Nor. Never. I look down once more and there in the still silence of dawn I can see a movement. A tiny movement. It’s one leaf trembling on a tree. One leaf among thousands. Among millions. An individual, doing his own thing.” p282
March 3, 2018
Pig iron is a brutal book, it opens with an act of shocking violence that lets us know that Ben Myers will spare the reader nothing, nor should he since the violence is what shaped the characters. But there is nothing gratuitous in the story, we can trust that Mr Myers only asks us to witness what is necessary, and he tells the story with language that is startlingly beautiful for such a tough tale. The characters speak in the vernacular of the northlands, something that in a lesser writer could feel like a gimmick, but in this book serves to makes the characters that much more real so that they reach into your heart or mind and stay there.
As in The Gallows Pole, Myers so thoroughly evokes the northlands of England: the gritty council estates, and the mystery and solitude of the woods and moors, especially of the woods and moors, that we are held spellbound and are momentarily disoriented when we look up from the page and discover we are in our own home.
To review the book would give too much away, so I will only say that it is the story of young John-John Wisdom who might be 19, he doesn’t know his age because he doesn’t know his date of birth, when we meet him. He is alone in the world as he begins a new life, one in which he hopes to leave the violence of his childhood behind. His mother tells us the story of John-John’s life in a series of letters or diary entries addressed to John-John, and John-John shares with us, in first person narrative, his attempts to live a good life in spite of the barriers that continue to be placed in his way and because of his family name. We learn what sustains him and gives him hope in the face of a world that is unfamiliar to him: he doesn’t know how to use a mobile phone or what email is; and people that are too familiar to him: desperate people trying any way to survive a life with no opportunities and no easy options.
John-John is a traveler and the son of the infamous Mac Wisdom, king of the gypsies, a bare knuckle brawler who never lost a fight, until he did, and who taught his son how to fight, not out of love for his son, there was no love in the Wisdom home, at least none that wasn’t crushed and twisted into something awful and ugly, but because fighting and brutality was the only thing Mac ever shared with his wife and children.
I won’t say more about John-John’s fate except to say that John-John is not his father and that one can overcome a hopeless beginning. It is only slightly hyperbolic to say that my heart soared with John-John.
I heartily recommend this book.
As in The Gallows Pole, Myers so thoroughly evokes the northlands of England: the gritty council estates, and the mystery and solitude of the woods and moors, especially of the woods and moors, that we are held spellbound and are momentarily disoriented when we look up from the page and discover we are in our own home.
To review the book would give too much away, so I will only say that it is the story of young John-John Wisdom who might be 19, he doesn’t know his age because he doesn’t know his date of birth, when we meet him. He is alone in the world as he begins a new life, one in which he hopes to leave the violence of his childhood behind. His mother tells us the story of John-John’s life in a series of letters or diary entries addressed to John-John, and John-John shares with us, in first person narrative, his attempts to live a good life in spite of the barriers that continue to be placed in his way and because of his family name. We learn what sustains him and gives him hope in the face of a world that is unfamiliar to him: he doesn’t know how to use a mobile phone or what email is; and people that are too familiar to him: desperate people trying any way to survive a life with no opportunities and no easy options.
John-John is a traveler and the son of the infamous Mac Wisdom, king of the gypsies, a bare knuckle brawler who never lost a fight, until he did, and who taught his son how to fight, not out of love for his son, there was no love in the Wisdom home, at least none that wasn’t crushed and twisted into something awful and ugly, but because fighting and brutality was the only thing Mac ever shared with his wife and children.
I won’t say more about John-John’s fate except to say that John-John is not his father and that one can overcome a hopeless beginning. It is only slightly hyperbolic to say that my heart soared with John-John.
I heartily recommend this book.
February 7, 2016
Rounding the halfway bend in PIG IRON last weekend, I found myself more and more gripped by the fate of its narrator, John-John Wisdom, a young man whose hardscrabble history is steadily revealed to the reader through the course of a twined narrative that braids together parallel first person accounts by he and his mother. The investment that I'd placed in the novel paid double as I finished the book, at last learning the whole truth of the Wisdom’s family story. In the parlance of England, they are “Travellers,” not exactly ethnic Roma but wandering tribes nonetheless, similar to Europe’s long-shunned gypsies. The inventiveness with language and vocabulary was reminiscent to me of what Russell Hoban did in Ridley Walker and Anthony Burgess in Clockwork Orange, albeit without quite the same futuristic-apocalyptic intimations. Young Wisdom’s late father was a bare-knuckle boxer, while his son’s a fighter of a different kind. John-John, at the start of the book recently released from a five-year sentence in prison, is determined to put his life back together following a deed that he only hints at when a new girlfriend asks him about his time away from the rural climes he cherishes, his “green cathedral.” The references to a rural idyll reminded me of when a terminally ill Dennis Potter, creator of “The Singing Detective” TV series, expressed a deep connection for the Forest of Dean in his courageous 1994 interview with Melvyn Bragg. I also see Myers’ work in a line of connection with English writer about landscape and wild places, Robert Macfarlane, whose The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot I loved so much. I loved reading PIG IRON, and recommend it most highly. Also posted here on my blog: http://bit.ly/1mkENzM
November 18, 2015
As a reader, you may occasionally stumble across an undiscovered masterpiece. This is one such book. Although dark and disturbing, this novel is also beautiful and poetic. A novel to make you gasp, groan, weep and smile, it takes you to the darkest of places, but there is always a small glimmer of light in the distance. I will not forget this book.
April 23, 2023
Wow. This book is magnificent. Dark, brutal and violent. And lyrical, poetic. Tender. Honestly. I don't think I'm going to read better than this again this year.
*There is a very unpleasant scene with a puppy which may not be for everyone. I managed to skip the worst bit.
*There is a very unpleasant scene with a puppy which may not be for everyone. I managed to skip the worst bit.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 9, 2024
A very sad book where literally not one person is having a good time. Benjamin Myers is the only writer who I would have read a book this grim for. 4 stars!!!!
November 26, 2012
One of my books of the year. Intense, brutal, focussed and immensely readable.
Benjamin Meyers digs deep in 'Pig Iron' to uncover the seedier side of the lives of a handful of characters. They lead the sort of lives that most of us know exist but never experience.
John-John Wisdom, a traveller who's served time, leaves prison with the intention of rebuilding his life. Of course, it was never going to be that easy, but I didn't think it could be as hard as it turned out.
An enthralling read that deserves to be widely read. How I wish books like this were given major coverage rather than the usual suspects.
Benjamin Meyers digs deep in 'Pig Iron' to uncover the seedier side of the lives of a handful of characters. They lead the sort of lives that most of us know exist but never experience.
John-John Wisdom, a traveller who's served time, leaves prison with the intention of rebuilding his life. Of course, it was never going to be that easy, but I didn't think it could be as hard as it turned out.
An enthralling read that deserves to be widely read. How I wish books like this were given major coverage rather than the usual suspects.
August 15, 2023
If Breece Pancake had been a Geordie he might have written something like this. It’s refreshing to see for a change a British novel that doesn’t run off to the past or to London for its setting.
As an aside, I’ve only just realised this is the same author who wrote Richard (about the disappearance of Richard Edwards, founding member of the Manic Street Preachers). I reviewed that novel for Amazon Vine many years ago. The author has done rather well for himself since then - republished by Bloomsbury, TV/film adaptations in the can or optioned, Walter Scott prize.
Good for him.
As an aside, I’ve only just realised this is the same author who wrote Richard (about the disappearance of Richard Edwards, founding member of the Manic Street Preachers). I reviewed that novel for Amazon Vine many years ago. The author has done rather well for himself since then - republished by Bloomsbury, TV/film adaptations in the can or optioned, Walter Scott prize.
Good for him.
October 25, 2021
Cassie I hope you know I will be permanantly scarred by this book and I blame you.
March 12, 2025
Bleak, gripping, harrowing, some really dark humour, beautifully written (often in local dialect) and a lead character who you really want to succeed in his efforts to escape from a violent, alcoholic, family background, and a community plagued by criminal/violent teenage gangs.
Think Shuggie Bain!
Think Shuggie Bain!
February 17, 2024
A seriously excellent, bleak, and gritty exploration of England through the lens of generational violence, Traveller culture, and the post-industrial north. Not for the faint-hearted. Meyers continues to impress with his range and skill.
November 21, 2021
Another brutal, brusing tale from Myers. Having been knocked out by his astonishing book Beastings, I decided to look out for more novels from this author. You need a tough constitution to cope with the intensity and violence of the tale of John-John Wisdom, the traveller son of a legendary bare-knuckle fighter, who has just been released from prison. John-John is a heartbreaking character, a boy man desperate to escape the cycle of violence that his ensnared him all his life. As in Myers' other books, however, there is also real beauty and poetry in the character's deep-set, instinctive love of nature.
June 23, 2018
This is a brutal, beautiful book, squalid and sublime. Benjamin Myers lifts a stone off the world and finds underneath everything that is rancid and squirming - humanity decomposing to mush - but also a hard shining diamond of resilience which will not be crushed or dulled or contaminated by the surrounding cess.
John-John is a young man recently released from prison. Haling from the travelling community but ostracised by it, he has nowhere to go, neither family nor friends, and he sets about rebuilding a life on his own. Dumped at a grotty flat in a run-down area of town, John-John gets himself a job and buys the meagre necessaries of life. He is independent, determined, guided by a clear personal compass of right and wrong. His spirit and his moral integrity shine like beacons amid the deprivation of the estate, the drugged-up and boozed-up, the dealers and louts and layabouts and thieves. There were times when John-John’s world seemed so heartless, sordid and bleak that I had to put the book to one side. It seemed impossible to me that he could survive, that he wouldn’t fall into the abyss of the darkest of dark sides.
John-John isn’t well educated although he has taken every opportunity for self-improvement that HM prison has afforded. He has been dragged up, beaten up and banged up. Life has not treated him well. And yet he is good; good with a resolute inner core of decency. And he is likeable. His character and his situation have shades of Billy in A Kestrel for a Knave and also of David Copperfield. They are all innocents abroad in a world which is uncaring and cruel. But they are not infected by it; indeed they make the utter hopelessness bearable.
Intertwined with John-John’s story is his mother’s, told in the second person, addressed to John-John (an unusual and difficult approach but consummately pulled off here) the reader discovers John-John’s story; his bare-knuckle-fighter father, his abused mother, John-John’s own place in the dysfunctional Wisdom family.
The story is set in the north-east of England, presenting an anachronism of extreme poverty in all its forms - economic, emotional, urban, moral - and breath-taking beauty. The countryside is simply splendid; a vast canvas of moors and hills, pastoral farmland, wild coast. All this Benjamin Myers portrays through the eyes of his protagonist in language which is soaring, apposite, cringingly vivid. He uses local dialect. Some readers might struggle at first with the idiom but be patient. The voices of John-John and his mother are authentic. They resonate. They imbue the text and the story with blistering, toe-curling truth.
John-John is a young man recently released from prison. Haling from the travelling community but ostracised by it, he has nowhere to go, neither family nor friends, and he sets about rebuilding a life on his own. Dumped at a grotty flat in a run-down area of town, John-John gets himself a job and buys the meagre necessaries of life. He is independent, determined, guided by a clear personal compass of right and wrong. His spirit and his moral integrity shine like beacons amid the deprivation of the estate, the drugged-up and boozed-up, the dealers and louts and layabouts and thieves. There were times when John-John’s world seemed so heartless, sordid and bleak that I had to put the book to one side. It seemed impossible to me that he could survive, that he wouldn’t fall into the abyss of the darkest of dark sides.
John-John isn’t well educated although he has taken every opportunity for self-improvement that HM prison has afforded. He has been dragged up, beaten up and banged up. Life has not treated him well. And yet he is good; good with a resolute inner core of decency. And he is likeable. His character and his situation have shades of Billy in A Kestrel for a Knave and also of David Copperfield. They are all innocents abroad in a world which is uncaring and cruel. But they are not infected by it; indeed they make the utter hopelessness bearable.
Intertwined with John-John’s story is his mother’s, told in the second person, addressed to John-John (an unusual and difficult approach but consummately pulled off here) the reader discovers John-John’s story; his bare-knuckle-fighter father, his abused mother, John-John’s own place in the dysfunctional Wisdom family.
The story is set in the north-east of England, presenting an anachronism of extreme poverty in all its forms - economic, emotional, urban, moral - and breath-taking beauty. The countryside is simply splendid; a vast canvas of moors and hills, pastoral farmland, wild coast. All this Benjamin Myers portrays through the eyes of his protagonist in language which is soaring, apposite, cringingly vivid. He uses local dialect. Some readers might struggle at first with the idiom but be patient. The voices of John-John and his mother are authentic. They resonate. They imbue the text and the story with blistering, toe-curling truth.
May 7, 2020
When I was reading Pig Iron, I was transported back to my late teens when I was discovering authors such as Patrick McCabe and Irvine Welsh. Mainly because Pig Iron as the same themes of how one’s upbringing is ingrained in a personality.
John-John has been released from prison. Luckily he finds a job driving a van and selling ice-creams and finds adequate housing. However John-John has other demons which need dealing with. Most of them stem from his background : one is his unstable relationship with his macho boxer father and the other is his gypsy heritage, which makes him a target for a gang of Neo Nazis. Will John-John be able to cope with the amount of baggage that comes with his hometown?
Pig Iron alternates between John-John’s present and his past, which connects a lot of dots – Why he is on his won,why he went to prison, his odd nature. generally I find these types of interjections jarring but it works well here.
Stylewise the book is written in dialect and contains a lot of observational humor. John-John has a knack of chronicling the more weird aspects of society and at times they can be very funny. Books rarely make me laugh but this one gave me the giggles quite a few times. Saying that there are moments of brutality and the descriptions managed to get a reaction out of me as well. There’s also a raw cinematic quality in Myers style. I constantly imagined Pig Iron as a film directed by Ken Loach or Shane Meadows
Pig Iron is a fantastic novel. The writing is powerful, the characters are relatable and there are many memorable scenes. An understated masterpiece.
John-John has been released from prison. Luckily he finds a job driving a van and selling ice-creams and finds adequate housing. However John-John has other demons which need dealing with. Most of them stem from his background : one is his unstable relationship with his macho boxer father and the other is his gypsy heritage, which makes him a target for a gang of Neo Nazis. Will John-John be able to cope with the amount of baggage that comes with his hometown?
Pig Iron alternates between John-John’s present and his past, which connects a lot of dots – Why he is on his won,why he went to prison, his odd nature. generally I find these types of interjections jarring but it works well here.
Stylewise the book is written in dialect and contains a lot of observational humor. John-John has a knack of chronicling the more weird aspects of society and at times they can be very funny. Books rarely make me laugh but this one gave me the giggles quite a few times. Saying that there are moments of brutality and the descriptions managed to get a reaction out of me as well. There’s also a raw cinematic quality in Myers style. I constantly imagined Pig Iron as a film directed by Ken Loach or Shane Meadows
Pig Iron is a fantastic novel. The writing is powerful, the characters are relatable and there are many memorable scenes. An understated masterpiece.
September 13, 2025
Without the library I would’ve never come across this book - shout out libraries you are proper good
November 3, 2020
This is an excellent book. It starts slow, although this may be because I was trying to read the whole book in a Geordie accent in my head for authenticity. There's a lot of slang, but it doesn't make it difficult reading.
Once the plot gets going though, it's a wild ride. It follows a traveller boy called John-John, which straight away marks it out as quite different - it's not a culture I've ever read or learned anything about before. And it goes from strength to strength, getting more hilarious and gruesome and twisted and visceral as it goes on. The ending felt a little abrupt, but on reflection it seems like the only way to end the book. Lots of unanswered questions, but satisfyingly unsatisfying.
Definitely a book to push you out of your reading comfort zone, in a very good way.
Once the plot gets going though, it's a wild ride. It follows a traveller boy called John-John, which straight away marks it out as quite different - it's not a culture I've ever read or learned anything about before. And it goes from strength to strength, getting more hilarious and gruesome and twisted and visceral as it goes on. The ending felt a little abrupt, but on reflection it seems like the only way to end the book. Lots of unanswered questions, but satisfyingly unsatisfying.
Definitely a book to push you out of your reading comfort zone, in a very good way.
May 12, 2019
Upon reading Myers' "The Gallows Pole" last year, I decided he is an amazing writer. Upon reading this book, I am convinced he has some sort of uncanny inner knowledge of the human spirit, particularly of his chosen demographic: rural, downbeat, criminal or marginalized groups of young British people of various denominations. From the way he interposes slow-flowing prose with rapid fire thickly accented dialogue, to the place of prominence that he gives to the natural landscape of England in his stories, Myers creates truly atmospheric settings, rich in colours, smells and characters. His books aren't that easy to read, and I'm not sure an individual perusing the library shelves would pick them up, but he is truly a unique author, worthy of all our attention.
January 5, 2013
I enjoyed consuming Pig Iron in one sitting. Comparable in darkness, humour and realism to some rather good Harry Crews I recently read. Pig Iron is a sort of North-Eastern Gothic.
The dialogue among travellers and estate dwellers was very well done and credible. A lot of traveller words were familiar from the local sites from my youth in Surrey. I hadn't heard about any chorring or bifters for years. There is nicely observed and accurate nostalgia in both storylines if you're British.
Despite the clearly despicable father, I felt the travelling community were treated with uncommon fairness and understanding. A refreshing change.
This would make a great Shane Meadows film.
The dialogue among travellers and estate dwellers was very well done and credible. A lot of traveller words were familiar from the local sites from my youth in Surrey. I hadn't heard about any chorring or bifters for years. There is nicely observed and accurate nostalgia in both storylines if you're British.
Despite the clearly despicable father, I felt the travelling community were treated with uncommon fairness and understanding. A refreshing change.
This would make a great Shane Meadows film.
November 29, 2012
Not a book to pass on to your mother afterwards. I'd never have read it if I'd known what scenes I'd come across. It's brutal, violent and disturbing but at the same time really quite brilliant. In one word it's about Freedom.
January 29, 2013
Brutal story fantastically written. This is the reason indie publishers should exist. To make sure the Mills and Boone ladies' book clubs go to bed with nightmares!
June 12, 2021
Pig Iron: A gypsy Rambo sells ice cream. I loved it.
October 24, 2022
Made me wanna rewatch the film SNATCH. How does this only have 700 reviews? This may have been the top 3 books I’ve read this year. After the first 40 pages the accent and regional dialogue clicks and the rest of the story zooms bye. Very funny, vulgar and heart wrenching
November 22, 2023
3.5 I really liked the style of writing and pace. I was totally gripped by the story but the brutal cruel, ultraviolence, especially involving animals was too much for me. It wasn't unnecessary to the story but I was relieved when it ended.
July 8, 2024
CWs: domestic abuse, animal torture & death, gore, rape, incest, child sexual abuse
December 20, 2025
Wow. I feel like my head and heart is mangled after reading this. God knows how much I love Myers, but this one was a step into brutality a bit too far for me in parts. It’s probably what makes it so brilliant and powerful, but it was very triggering! John- John was another unforgettable character. My grandads home village was mentioned 💙
July 29, 2021
quite epic tbh, funny and full of humanity
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