HOMEWORK - Geoff Dyer (epub)(Nonfiction)

Homework by Geoff Dyer
Year First Published: 2025
Category/Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir, Social History

Homework is the first full memoir by acclaimed British writer Geoff Dyer, offering a vivid, witty, and deeply perceptive portrait of his childhood and adolescence in postwar England. Born in Cheltenham in 1958 to a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Dyer grew up as an only child in a working-class family shaped by the lingering shadows of the Depression and the Second World War, yet also benefiting from the new opportunities of the postwar settlement.

The memoir traces Dyer’s formative years through the 1960s and 1970s—a period of profound social change in Britain. He recalls the tactile joys of childhood: building Airfix models, collecting football cards and conkers, and the rituals of primary school. At age eleven, he faces the pivotal 11-plus exam, which determines whether he will attend a secondary modern or a grammar school. Dyer’s success in the exam sends him to Cheltenham Grammar, opening up a world of new experiences: the tribulations of teenage sport, the thrill of live music, awkward romantic encounters, and the beginnings of his lifelong love affair with literature, beer, and prog rock