Homework, Geoff Dyer
Homework, Geoff Dyer
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Homework
A Memoir

Author: Geoff Dyer

Narrator: Leighton Pugh

Unabridged: 10 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/10/2025

Synopsis

A portrait of a young boy, who keeps passing exams—and of a changing England in the 1960s and 1970s.The only child of a sheet-metal worker and a dinner lady who worked at the canteen of the local school, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of the Depression and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, this loving memoir is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the post-war settlement, of which the author was an unconscious beneficiary. The crux comes at the age of eleven with the exam that decided the future of generations of British schoolkids: secondary modern or the transformative possibilities of grammar school? One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to grammar school, where he develops a love of literature (and beer and prog rock).Mapping a path from primary school through the tribulations of teenage sport, gig-going, romantic fumblings, fights (well, getting punched in the face), and other misadventures with comic affection, Homework takes us to the threshold of university, where Dyer gets the first intimations that a short geographical journey—just forty miles—might extend to the length of a life.Recalling an eroded but strangely resilient England, Homework traces, in perfectly phrased and hilarious detail, roots that extend into the deep foundations of class society.

About Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer is the award-winning author of many books, including But Beautiful, Out of Sheer Rage, Zona (on Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker), and the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism). A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dyer lives in Los Angeles, where he is writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bookguide on March 17, 2025

Dyer’s memoir is a thoughtful and thought-provoking recreation of growing up in the provinces of England in the 1960s and ‘70s where wartime values of make do and mend were still the norm. Grammar schools gave everyone a route to university when a university education could still give you almost gua......more

Goodreads review by markpills on June 17, 2025

As an American who has never travelled around the Cotswolds, this is a distinctly British tale of growing up in approximately the same time or “era” as I grew up in Texas; however, the author writes w/ ferocious detail about his upbringing w/ a modernist perspective, as an only-child near Cheltenham......more

Goodreads review by Dan on April 22, 2025

My thanks to both NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advance copy of this biography about the critical years that helped shape a writer, life during the 60's and 70's, a life that was full of challenges, full of questions, and in many ways full of fun. I first became aware of Geoff Dyer w......more

Goodreads review by Jane on June 02, 2025

I discovered Geoff Dyer about three years ago. On the recommendation of a family member, I fell into ‘The Last Days of Roger Federer’ (splendid title, I think you will agree). Now I come to his memoir, titled ‘Homework’. Dyer grew up in Cheltenham, England, a town I know well, and he is four years y......more

Goodreads review by Annaliese on June 01, 2025

I very much dislike DNF'ing books. Very much. I think it's unfair to the whole work to stop short, even if it gets dull. I have waded through some books I should have dropped long before. ...And yet. I almost reached the point of DNF'ing this book. I would have, too, if it were not an ARC: at the ve......more

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