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The Unwashed
A stunningly beautiful collection of short stories showing humanity at its worst and at its most vulnerable. A Dickensian insight into the challenges faced by people living in contemporary London. The Unwashed throws you into the midst of life on the fictional Shakespeare Estate and allows you to live the lives of those struggling for recognition, purpose and - A refugee named Aisha arriving from a war-torn country, frightened and thrown into a world she has little understanding of. - A man struggling with alcoholism, promising himself that it is his last day drinking and his battle to believe that this will definitely be the last time he picks up a drink. - A young, single mother who is the target of vicious rumours and her attempts to do what is best for her child. - A young boy and the empathy he shows a mentally disabled man bullied by those around him. - A comedic story of a man waking from a night of drinking and believing that he has accidentally killed someone. - A young man from the home counties who decides to open a juice bar on the estate and his attempts to fit into a world alien to his own. - A group of heroin addicts living on the estate and the hatred they are shown by their drug dealer. The Unwashed is dark and gritty, taking you on a journey through the lives of those who are often invisible, humanising them. You’ll never look at people the same way again, wondering if they too have a story.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
186 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 22, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 16, 2016
2.5 stars
This is a fairly interesting collection of short stories of people living on a council estate in London.
Some of the stories are related, others not so much but maybe I'm missing clues?.
It was very bleak and somewhat disjointed. The style is very raw.
I would have preferred if the stories had all come together in some way...but no...not yet...
Maybe this will happen in the book that is coming out??
I'm not sure I want to read more like this though as it was very sad with little hope or even any spark. It pretty much showed the worst parts of human nature which was hard to read.
This is a fairly interesting collection of short stories of people living on a council estate in London.
Some of the stories are related, others not so much but maybe I'm missing clues?.
It was very bleak and somewhat disjointed. The style is very raw.
I would have preferred if the stories had all come together in some way...but no...not yet...
Maybe this will happen in the book that is coming out??
I'm not sure I want to read more like this though as it was very sad with little hope or even any spark. It pretty much showed the worst parts of human nature which was hard to read.
February 8, 2022
3.5 stars
September 14, 2021
A hard read
Not in a literary sense, this collection of short stories concern themselves with those who, by circumstances, find themselves outsiders from society. Victims and victimisers stuck in a never-ending cycle of pain and despair. Not poverty porn but a well-written collection of parables for the modern age and a sad reminder that nothing has really changed.
Not in a literary sense, this collection of short stories concern themselves with those who, by circumstances, find themselves outsiders from society. Victims and victimisers stuck in a never-ending cycle of pain and despair. Not poverty porn but a well-written collection of parables for the modern age and a sad reminder that nothing has really changed.
January 20, 2017
The Unwashed
Very good book...very real and earthy..well written and fast moving story. I will buy Liar. 5 Stars for this book
Very good book...very real and earthy..well written and fast moving story. I will buy Liar. 5 Stars for this book
February 25, 2018
Really enjoyed this collection of short stories about folk living on a run down London Council Estate. Read on my kindle in one sitting.
May 14, 2018
What a great read. Short stories, very gripping. Great to read in dinner hour. Some are humorous, some with a unexpected endings. Really enjoyed. Would recommend. 😊
May 20, 2018
Tough Gritty
A great collection of short stories based around the residents of a council estate ,Great read only one story a bit dull
A great collection of short stories based around the residents of a council estate ,Great read only one story a bit dull
October 6, 2020
This raw writing plunges you into different lives, different struggles, really liked some of them. Don't read when feeling blue, some novels bring the stinging feeling of hopelessness.
July 24, 2021
I really enjoyed this book! The stories seem fragmented but that adds to how authentic they are. I quite liked how some of them linked and some didn’t. I was left wanting to know more about a few characters and their future lives. A really interesting and sometimes heartbreaking read.
November 26, 2016
Sean Hogan has an uncanny ability to get inside people’s heads. For his backdrop he chooses the Shakespeare Estate in London with tower blocks where residents survive not knowing each other but gossiping and fabricating stories about about other’s lives. The Shakespeare epitomises what David Cameron discussed this year in a Sunday Times article when he described this country's post-war social housing estates as "brutal" and a "gift to criminals and drug dealers”
Poverty and struggle are entrenched throughout Hogan’s short stories, and crime has in fact been ‘designed-in’ due to decades of neglect. Those who can afford to move out, like the ghetto-rich drug dealer, Eric, have done so, leaving poorly laid-out tower blocks with wasted open space that are neither park nor garden, just a wall to kick a ball against and a bench for an old junkie to rest her tired behind on, under the illusion that her daughter – taken from her by Social Services 25 years ago – may one day return.
It’s not a depressing book, but it starts off that way, and I would question Hogan’s choice of first two chapters because I nearly gave up on it. The opening chapters of a book are possibly the most important. They’re the chapters that encourage the reader to read on. In fact, as a writer myself, I liken the opening chapters of a book to walking in a restaurant. If the restaurant is set up in such a way that you sense the buzz immediately and find yourself rubbing imaginary hands together thinking to yourself, “Oh yes, this looks like the place, we’re going to have fun tonight, I can’t wait to view the menu,” then the restaurant has written their opening chapters correctly.
Hogan’s first chapter, however, casts a different light on immigration in this country. He uses his talent for deducing what people are thinking in any given situation. Most of us only know what we’re thinking and feeling ourselves, and it kind of shakes us up a little bit to realise that others, although they may see things differently, are actually contemplating in exactly the same manner that we do. The immigrant in the story is having a tough time of it. This new country scares him and he has absolutely no idea how to use the local transport system – in this case the London Underground. This is hindered by the fact that he can’t speak the language.
It places the immigrant as a human being with fears, concerns, despair, anxiety and huge misgivings, and we kind of hope he makes it, for his background is bloodshed, massacre and the loss of his family.
My two favourite tales, I think, were ‘Chinese Whispers’ and ‘The Old Boy.’
‘Chinese Whispers’ is a remarkable tale of gossip and malicious ‘back-fence’ talk, and the consequence of making the wrong assumptions about people
‘The Old Boy’ takes an alcoholic who upon awakening discovers blood all over his living room. He assumes he’s killed ‘the old boy’ in a drunken rage and dumped the body in the canal. His best mate is also pretty sure he’s killed the old boy and is understandably concerned as to whether he might come looking for him next. The police are everywhere, investigating the body in the canal, and as the story unfolds we follow these two alcoholics as they try to individually outwit each other and the police.
The stories tend to dovetail at times, and although it’s never made clear I’m not too sure if the alcoholic is the woman in ‘Chinese Whispers’ brother, or if that’s another woman. But it doesn’t matter, it just keeps the reader slightly off balance, wondering what’s going t happen next.
‘Just Another Day,’ as mentioned above, tells the story of a worn out old prostitute who lost her child due to drug abuse. She’ll be 25 now - which gives you some idea of the age of her mother, still selling her body – and she wonders if she’ll recognise her if she ever returns to the bench they used to sit on, and how she’d feel about her mother’s choice of career
Prostitution, alcoholism and drug abuse are recurring themes throughout the book, and ‘Rats’ shows us how a drug dealer fails to see irony in his own life, which so intertwines with those he sells gear to. He looks down on them as little more than ‘Rats’ yet it’s very clear he’s the biggest rat of all.
Sean Hogan has much more to give, I’m sure, but I wouldn’t want to see him get typecast into just writing about council estates and tower blocks. Either way, this is an excellent book and well deserving of five stars.
Poverty and struggle are entrenched throughout Hogan’s short stories, and crime has in fact been ‘designed-in’ due to decades of neglect. Those who can afford to move out, like the ghetto-rich drug dealer, Eric, have done so, leaving poorly laid-out tower blocks with wasted open space that are neither park nor garden, just a wall to kick a ball against and a bench for an old junkie to rest her tired behind on, under the illusion that her daughter – taken from her by Social Services 25 years ago – may one day return.
It’s not a depressing book, but it starts off that way, and I would question Hogan’s choice of first two chapters because I nearly gave up on it. The opening chapters of a book are possibly the most important. They’re the chapters that encourage the reader to read on. In fact, as a writer myself, I liken the opening chapters of a book to walking in a restaurant. If the restaurant is set up in such a way that you sense the buzz immediately and find yourself rubbing imaginary hands together thinking to yourself, “Oh yes, this looks like the place, we’re going to have fun tonight, I can’t wait to view the menu,” then the restaurant has written their opening chapters correctly.
Hogan’s first chapter, however, casts a different light on immigration in this country. He uses his talent for deducing what people are thinking in any given situation. Most of us only know what we’re thinking and feeling ourselves, and it kind of shakes us up a little bit to realise that others, although they may see things differently, are actually contemplating in exactly the same manner that we do. The immigrant in the story is having a tough time of it. This new country scares him and he has absolutely no idea how to use the local transport system – in this case the London Underground. This is hindered by the fact that he can’t speak the language.
It places the immigrant as a human being with fears, concerns, despair, anxiety and huge misgivings, and we kind of hope he makes it, for his background is bloodshed, massacre and the loss of his family.
My two favourite tales, I think, were ‘Chinese Whispers’ and ‘The Old Boy.’
‘Chinese Whispers’ is a remarkable tale of gossip and malicious ‘back-fence’ talk, and the consequence of making the wrong assumptions about people
‘The Old Boy’ takes an alcoholic who upon awakening discovers blood all over his living room. He assumes he’s killed ‘the old boy’ in a drunken rage and dumped the body in the canal. His best mate is also pretty sure he’s killed the old boy and is understandably concerned as to whether he might come looking for him next. The police are everywhere, investigating the body in the canal, and as the story unfolds we follow these two alcoholics as they try to individually outwit each other and the police.
The stories tend to dovetail at times, and although it’s never made clear I’m not too sure if the alcoholic is the woman in ‘Chinese Whispers’ brother, or if that’s another woman. But it doesn’t matter, it just keeps the reader slightly off balance, wondering what’s going t happen next.
‘Just Another Day,’ as mentioned above, tells the story of a worn out old prostitute who lost her child due to drug abuse. She’ll be 25 now - which gives you some idea of the age of her mother, still selling her body – and she wonders if she’ll recognise her if she ever returns to the bench they used to sit on, and how she’d feel about her mother’s choice of career
Prostitution, alcoholism and drug abuse are recurring themes throughout the book, and ‘Rats’ shows us how a drug dealer fails to see irony in his own life, which so intertwines with those he sells gear to. He looks down on them as little more than ‘Rats’ yet it’s very clear he’s the biggest rat of all.
Sean Hogan has much more to give, I’m sure, but I wouldn’t want to see him get typecast into just writing about council estates and tower blocks. Either way, this is an excellent book and well deserving of five stars.
August 29, 2016
I could not put this book down till the finish. Some of the stories, of different experiences in people’s lives where so familiar to me, in people I knew when I was growing up, and many in my own Life, really enjoyed the read, looking forward to Sean’s next book ‘Liar’
October 21, 2016
Good
Imaginative short stories about different peoplels lives on a run down estate. Believable characters. I would read this authors books again.
Imaginative short stories about different peoplels lives on a run down estate. Believable characters. I would read this authors books again.
November 29, 2016
Great short reads
Really enjoyed the grittyness of this book. Fast moving addictive story's. A really enjoyable collection of story's. Will look for more from the author.
Really enjoyed the grittyness of this book. Fast moving addictive story's. A really enjoyable collection of story's. Will look for more from the author.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews