Treacle Town is a hard-hitting tale of disenfranchised working-class youth with very strong language throughout.
Con O’Neil and his three best mates live and survive in Coatbridge, Scotland. Gang violence is rife and Con’s closest friend, Biscuit, has been murdered by a rival gang. There is pressure to avenge Biscuit but to do so would surely lead to dire consequences.
That is not the only pressure on Con. His mother is dead, having committed suicide. Con has no job. He lives at home with his body-builder father and the relationship has not been good since his mother died. Con’s mate Trig is putting serious pressure on to find the rival gang and get their own back. Sectarianism also rules in this grim environment.
Con spends the novel ruminating on how he can escape this environmental cage he seems to be trapped in. He does have a facility with words and discovers, online, a local slam poetry group that seem to specialise in challenging performances reflecting the reality of their lives. Incidents swirl around Con as he struggles to persuade himself to attend his first poetry slam in Glasgow.
Brian Conaghan, the author, comes from Coatbridge and the setting is portrayed vividly – a bleak place to live but with glimmers of solidarity and love. The novel is told in the first person, reflecting the local vernacular, which includes frequent use of swear words, which some readers might find offensive. The back cover states that the book is ‘not suitable for younger readers’ – no doubt because of the strong language.
This is a powerful novel for older readers of young people living in extremely challenging circumstances. Gritty, violent but ultimately suggesting that there is always hope.
This review was written by David Reedy
David is a past President and former General Secretary of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA). Until 2014 he was Principal Adviser for primary schools in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham as well as Co-Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT). His most recent publications are Talk for Teaching and Learning: The Dialogic Classroom ( UKLA 2021), Teaching Primary English: Subject Knowledge and Classroom Practice (Routledge 2018), Teaching Grammar Effectively in Primary Schools (UKLA 2019), all co-written with Eve Bearne, and Guiding Reading - A Handbook for Teaching Guided Reading at KS2 ( UCL 2016) with Wayne Tennent, Angela Hobsbaum and Nikki Gamble.David has worked at all levels in education and continues to work extensively with primary teachers and schools to develop literacy education.
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