Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man

by Eric Wright

Book Overview

Eric Wright is well known for his award-winning crime fiction. In this memoir he writes engagingly and with great charm about growing up poor in an English working-class family during the Depression. He paints a vivid picture of his childhood and adolescence in pre-war England plagued by class structure and restriction. This is a superbly written memoir and an invaluable portrait of a social class as well as the immigrant experience to Canada.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1552633624
• ISBN13: 9781552633625
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Key Porter Books Ltd
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.6" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Book!

When I was visiting Port Angeles Washington around March of 2000 I was sitting overlooking the Juan De Fuca which is a body of water about 20 miles wide which seperates the USA and Canada. You can barely make out Canada over the sea. Canadian radio would come over to Port Angeles and it was during this moment of relaxation that I first heard of Eric Wright. He gave an interview about his newly released book Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man. It's about his childhood in London in the 1930's and his struggles and eventual immigration to Canada. I'm not sure exactly why I found it so fascinating but the way he tells this story is wonderful. Perhaps because it's so entirely human. Like an Oliver Twist story this is a bigger than life story of someones ordinary life experience. If you come from the uk and now live in the USA, Canada or Australia, you would probably find that this book will lead you down a path of self discovery that you may have long forgotten over the years. It might shake you up. The characters come to life and touch you.