Born Free
- 27 Jun 2000
- 9781841950488
- £9.99
- 288 pp
- 129×197mm
In a few words
‘One of Scotland’s most talented writers’ Daily Telegraph
The writing is of a high quality and puts across a powerful sense of claustrophobia and quiet desperation.
It's desperately readable, blackly comic and painful, a delight born of dysfunction.
More about
the book
Punchy, acerbic, sharp-witted and above-all, acutely observed, Born Free tells the story of an ordinary family who are all trying to escape from something – and each other.
The interactions between Jake, Joni, Angie and Vic reveal a hellish cocktail of asdolescent and mid-life crises; the savagery of sibling rivalry; the waking nightmare of a marriage gone cold – and, naturally, the unbridgeable, infernal chasm between the generations.
It’s a story of everyday life.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WHITBREAD FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2000 BOOK OF THE YEAR – THE FACE ’99 NOMINATED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE
Born Free confirms Laura Hird as one of Scotland's most talented writers. This bleak tale of urban dismay, set in the badlands of Edinburgh, is a work of considerable force and maturity - Hird organises her material with confidence and style - The novel's final 50 pages are a memorable descent into the dark mires of the human spirit, yet the book ends with a spark of optimism.
Born Free exhibits a maturity that suggests Hird has emerged from the coat-tails of her peers and has ceased to play the literary wee sister - she manages to carry things off with aplomb - Hird's portrayal of a woman in alcoholic free-fall is uncomfortably accurate - shifts with ease from the screamingly funny to the gut-wrenching - thought provoking and entertaining.
