Maggie & Me: Coming Out and Coming of Age in 1980s Scotland
British journalist Barr’s affecting memoir begins when he is eight and witnesses, on television, the escape of Margaret Thatcher from the notorious Brighton bombing. Like the redoubtable Thatcher, Barr is a survivor; indeed, his story of growing up in Scotland is one of surviving the eighties, the decade that Thatcher defined. It wasn’t easy: he was battered and beaten by his mother’s vile boyfriend, his mother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and, because she was unable to work, the impoverished family lived on government allotments in a council house. Always the tallest boy in his class, he was, he writes, “scarecrow skinny and speccy with join-the-dots spots, bottle-opener buck teeth and a thing for waistcoats. Plus I get free school dinners and I’m gay.” Yes, Barr’s memoir is also a coming-out story. At turns tender, funny, and sad, Barr’s smoothly written account is moving and always engaging. Though Thatcher, a spectral presence in the book, visited havoc on life in Scotland, Barr remains grateful to her for inspiring him to excel in order to escape his miserable life. And so, as his memoir attests, he has. --Michael Cart