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Modern Classics the Grass Arena: An Autobiography

by John Healy

4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 · rating details · 264 ratings · 46 reviews

John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. This Penguin Classics edition includes an afterword by Colin MacCabe. In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when beggin ...more

Paperback , 272 pages

Published July 29th 2008 by Penguin Classic (first published 1988)

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Oct 08, 2008 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-autobiography

Brilliant. Not a word wasted. I read it in two days. I will keep this as a talisman to ward off sentimentality and gush. To start at the end of it, I will add this book as a resource to keep away from me, “…middle-class men and women, clean and fresh, whom it didn’t seem possible life had touched, discussing in posh, educated voices the hardships that had been handed to them until, on the point of suicide, they had found…” X,Y,Z: whatever self-indulgent claptrap filled in for them the life that Brilliant. Not a word wasted. I read it in two days. I will keep this as a talisman to ward off sentimentality and gush. To start at the end of it, I will add this book as a resource to keep away from me, “…middle-class men and women, clean and fresh, whom it didn’t seem possible life had touched, discussing in posh, educated voices the hardships that had been handed to them until, on the point of suicide, they had found…” X,Y,Z: whatever self-indulgent claptrap filled in for them the life that was missing.
Healy, punchbag for a violent, vicious Catholic father, tempered by a hard environment, further brutalised in the army, and soon for fifteen years a member of that ‘vagrant society’ (his words) that is the city within the city of London. Alcoholics will love you if you have a bottle and kill you if you will not share it. This is a tremendously violent world, bleak beyond respectable imaginings, a world that is kept hidden largely by the routinely violent institutions of court, prison, healthcare. It is not the individuals as such, although there are plenty of psycopaths within and without the arena just as there are some gems (a probation officer, one who helped turn his life around) it is more a structural divide: “It just is”. Very funny at times, very warm too. Human, at the individual level, this Healy is a man worth the time in knowing. Not just for gawkish or voyeuristic reasons, not to admire or detest, but to see ourselves in. There is a good Afterword by Colin McCabe which compares human behaviour in the Grass Arena with that in the (financial) city: both societies struggle for power, the first is more honest and stripped down to basics stripped of their sartorial sheen of respectability.
It’s a book about one person too who could be any or many of us, struggling to communicate. Common ground, park, grass arena, community, society. Healy, brought late to sobriety struggling and feeling unreal outside in the healthy happy laughing world of the confident. To get there, “I only had my aggression to relate with. If I couldn’t use that, I couldn’t communicate.” Think about it. “I only had my aggression to relate with.”
And driving it all, the Tension, the physical almost twin of himself that clawed into his neck and shoulders, the dreadful anxiety and fear. Fear is a main part of the lexicon in other ways: “ … he who can produce the most fear gets the most drink for nothing. Everyone and everything is full of tension. There are no tomorrows; tomorrows can’t be relied on to come in this vagrant society. Nothing can be taken for granted. Each day you have to prove yourself anew in toughness or lack of it, in stealing, fighting, begging and drinking.”
Healy never quite lost everything. He never went mad completely. That made it worse in some ways. “Trying to hold onto a bit of sanity can make you vulnerable in lots of ways.” That he did hold on leaves us with a rarely powerful testimony.
The consistency in the unadorned writing, cut to the bone, is parallel with the man who is the body who is the feelings and one of us, but ‘authentic’, so when he does, rarely do a summing up or overview it rings true: “And I’m just drinking and smoking, doing my little bit of nick. It seems such an idle boast. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of it. It just is.” (this against a procession of the much more broken than him). Think about it: “It just is”.
There is a lot to be dug over for the nature of addiction, and McCabe does, it is pretty interesting. But Healy just stops, Just like that. No fuss. He found something else, another addiction without harmful side effects and which brought him money and prizes and respect. Find out what it was yourself. But he saw through that, saw it as helpful for a while, then dropped it. He fell in love, it nearly came right, but then he never saw her. Utopia never came. It never does. Life just is.
...more

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Apr 20, 2015 Seraphina rated it 5 of 5 stars

I finished Modern Classics the Grass Arena: An Autobiography yesterday and it was brilliant. A gritty account of life as a homeless alcoholic in inner city London. Healy doesn't hold back telling his life story of 15 years of homelessness and life with fellow alcoholics and the carnage caused in order to get the next drink. He is not looking for sympathy, there is no great ethical or moral tale. It is just the sheer truth of the situation which makes this so good.
It is a part of life I have cert ...more

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Oct 31, 2013 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction , 2013

terrifying. Review coming (hopefully...)
OK I’ve changed the 4 stars to 5, mainly because I’ve been sat thinking about this again, and can’t get the voice, its insistence on truth and its brutal depiction of the world of the vagrant alcoholic out of my head. This is one of the milder episodes: ‘We could get no water to mix with it [surgical spirit], so we went in the church and filled a milk bottle out of the holy water font and started slowly to swallow it. But it’s hard to get down first thing terrifying. Review coming (hopefully...)
OK I’ve changed the 4 stars to 5, mainly because I’ve been sat thinking about this again, and can’t get the voice, its insistence on truth and its brutal depiction of the world of the vagrant alcoholic out of my head. This is one of the milder episodes: ‘We could get no water to mix with it [surgical spirit], so we went in the church and filled a milk bottle out of the holy water font and started slowly to swallow it. But it’s hard to get down first thing in the day – any time for that matter. Bastard stuff. It either makes you dead sleepy and fit for nothing or drives you mad and ready to kill some cunt.’

When I started the book I felt reading non-fiction (which I rarely do) lacked the density at sentence level of fiction. Too many clichés I felt (eg ‘six months flew by’ and ‘we begged, borrowed or stole’). However I was wrong, the prose picked up a momentum and was actually quite beautiful in its pared-to-the bone way. I did have a slight issue with the way women were depicted, on virtually every page an ‘attractive’ woman passes by, with ‘shapely legs’ or ‘good tits’ or something and this did get a bit tiring. But that was just his direct honesty coming out, and really you wouldn’t want anything else. Besides it’s daft complaining about sexism when murder and mayhem are happening all around. The alcoholic is ruthless – anything for a drink; nothing else matters. Take this incident when a fight breaks out amongst his companions and Jock is stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle:

His shirt collar turned crimson.. his throat was bursting with it. It bubbled up into his mouth, nothing could muffle the sound of the blood gurgling out between his fingers.. he’d sort of gone to walk away, gone round in a small circle and then in a stumble changed his mind and began coming back towards us, blowing awful bubbles.’

Healey doesn’t help or even react much, he’s just happy there’s more to drink: I started drinking one of the bottles. Now he was in the road. The cars were swerving and hooting, just missing him whenever he blundered in the wrong direction. It was comical really. Blood splashed and exhausted, stumbling and jerking around, he was saved from toppling over by being bounced from car to car. .. I watched for a while but he seemed to be making no progress at all, so I just got stuck into another bottle… there was so much drink left you couldn’t really believe in death.

The book is stuffed with anecdotes about stealing, drinking, fighting, sexual desire (usually not fulfilled), and is packed with great characters. Healy’s recall is astounding, full of detail. He is a remarkable man, resilient, wiry, aggressive, incapable of dissembling. And an excellent writer.

I remember seeing the film back in the 90s with Mark Rylance as Healy and it had the same raw amorality, its hunger for drink and its disdain for pretensions, I think. It’s a while since I saw it so I’m going to chase it up.

Whitaker in his review has links to articles about what became of Healy after he replaced alcoholism with another addiction – Albailart in his superb review says he’d rather leave it up to the reader to find out what, so I’m following suit.
...more

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Jul 16, 2014 Whitaker rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: recommended-unreservedly , memoir-biography , 2010-read , 3965p-box3

I think it's criminal that this book isn't more widely known and read. It's a no bullshit account of his life as an alcoholic vagrant. It's honest and true and what the fucking hell is wrong with this world that only 12 people on GR have read it????

Here're two articles on his life subsequent to the events in this autobiography: "What happened next?" , and "Saved by the book .

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Aug 15, 2015 K.D. Absolutely rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: Whitaker

Shelves: autobiography , addiction , gift-book

Think William Burroughs's Naked Lunch (5 stars) and then add chess as the turning point of the story. I am not an alcoholic. Neither am I a drug user, vagrant nor grew up in a dysfunctional family with abusive father. I have not been into a sport but I box only as part of regular physical fitness. My father and my two older brothers are good chess players. When I was a young boy, there was a chess tournament in our hometown and my eldest brother got the first prize while the second got the secon Think William Burroughs's Naked Lunch (5 stars) and then add chess as the turning point of the story. I am not an alcoholic. Neither am I a drug user, vagrant nor grew up in a dysfunctional family with abusive father. I have not been into a sport but I box only as part of regular physical fitness. My father and my two older brothers are good chess players. When I was a young boy, there was a chess tournament in our hometown and my eldest brother got the first prize while the second got the second place. I tried playing it but I just could not think prior to moving my piece. This part in Healy's narration did not come to me:

"After we'd been playing for around two weeks, something clicked in my chess mind and I started to think before making a move, instead of making a move and then thinking."

Healy was 30 when he started playing chess. I am now 52 so even if I anticipate my opponent's move, I don't think I will be a great chess player. Healy even says: "Talent and youth - that's what's needed for success at chess; with the emphasis on youth."

So that's it. I and this book has nothing in common and it could neither be an escapist book for me. Towards the end, when Healy was in India, I even thought that he would be like Elizabeth Gilbert in her very popular (and I don't know why) Eat, Pray, Love (1 star). Good that Healy did not go to Italy and Indonesia. Otherwise, I would not have given this a 4-star rating that in Goodreads means "I really like it!"

So, why did I like this book? The writing: it felt sincere. It is devoid of difficult words and literary style that sometimes are used by authors only to impress. The telling is straightforward and the short sentences felt urgent and you can't stop reading while wondering if there is really that "grass arena" in the seedy part of London where guys with no bottles of booze can get killed (or those who don't share bottles can get killed too).

In summary, it is a self-confession of an alcoholic in London. Then he discovers chess and it brings him back to sanity.

Thank you to Whitaker for swapping this book with my "Noli Me Tangere". My eldest brother, Joselito and our common friend Emir Never (both of them are good chess players as well as bookworms) are patiently waiting for me to finish this book so they can borrow. Haha. My brother says that this is a rare book and they've been looking for this book since many months ago. Only to find out that I have it in my to-be-read folder.

A must read for all chess players and readers. ...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Amy Flaherty rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was a book that I really came across by chance and its a rare, rough, gritty, carefully told autobiography of a life that is not usually told. Healy was born to Irish parents in London and traveled back and forth across the UK during his young life. His early life was brutal, with a father who was very abusive and who did not provide a solid upbringing for Healy. He was a boxing champion by the time he was 16, was dishonorably discharged from the military and then lived the life of a wino i ...more

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Jul 24, 2010 Carol rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-read-booklist

This book came highly recommended. You open the first page and you walk through a door into the mind and life of an alcoholic. His degradation is sickening to read. I really got sick to my stomach.

An alcoholic knows no line they cross them all until there is no where else to go. It is either death or salvation. John Healy had a noxious childhood. Isolated by his mother and abused by his father, he staggered into drug and alcohol abuse to alleviate the pain in his body and soul.

Redemption comes ...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Howard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: goodreads-read

An incredible book. This is an autobiography of a genuinely ex-homeless man. There is no mawkishness here, no sugar-coating, just Healy's raw amoral truth. I don't think I have more sympathy for the homeless - some of their crimes are appalling - but I don't have less sympathy - their lives are more hideous than I had imagined. What I did get is insight, which, looking around the streets of London, is, in this case, a terrifying thing. It's worth noting too that Healy is a very good storyteller ...more

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Dec 09, 2013 Katie Mcsweeney rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography

Didn't realise that it was possible for me to not fall in love with the subject of a biography... John Healy I don't idolise or apologise for him. I respect him. An amazing man.
His biography has made me see my city with new eyes. It has made me see the homeless with new eyes, not the soppy, sorrowful middle class consciousness I previously saw them through. I am wondering much more practical things about the "texture of their lives" as Colin MacCabe puts it... how does their community work? Whe ...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Kirsten rated it 1 of 5 stars

Wow, what a book, feeling guilty for the one star rating already, but it was such a painful read that the only honest review for me would be 'didn't like it' hence the one star. Having said that, it was so powerful, this one gave me nightmares so couldn't read before bed. I had such difficulty reading about the brutal life that the author lived, a novelised account would have been easier to cope with for sure. I read it for book club and am glad we did it, as my self selection is inevitably base ...more

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Apr 11, 2012 Michael D rated it 5 of 5 stars

A remarkable book. Many have written about addiction but none to my mind from a position so deeply rooted in the abyss as Healy, not even Bukowski and certainly not Burroughs. The story of the author, who lived as a complete alcoholic vagrant for years and had many brushes with death, then finds redemption in prison through chess and strides out of the gutter, is one of the most life-affirming things I think I have ever read.

The style of writing is perhaps naive at the beginning but after a whi ...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Eoin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fantastic book based on the author's own experience as life as a homeless alcoholic in London. It depicts a world that is so familiar to us as we pass by such people almost every day, but yet is a world thoroughly alien and one that we hardly even contemplate.

A complete absence of self-pity, moralising or an attempt to apportion blame gives it extra weight. The book is deadly effective at bringing the reader into the bowels of life in the underworld in an almost life changing way. From then on, ...more

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Aug 25, 2014 Richard Simpson rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like this novel most of all because it holds a certain 'nostalgia' for me. I remember when I was a child watching the film adaptation of this and seeing a pre-adolescent given a pint of beer in a pub bought by an older friend, and the child later became an alcoholic down the years. This was prescient, the experience mirrored my own, where drinking at the age of twelve/thirteen I drank in the company of older friends, and by the time I was nineteen was a fully-fledged alcoholic. Tragedy ensued, ...more

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Aug 18, 2014 Christian Schwoerke rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a profoundly, powerfully sad book, written by an extraordinary man.

It’s not clear how extraordinary John Healy is till the end of his autobiographical account, which ends presumably sometime before he chronicles his story. The only date that crops up in the book is 1960, when it seems Healy might be about 20 years old, then there is reference to his age of 28, when he’s many years into his alcoholic life. After the bulk of the book chronicles in its timeless fashion his episodic life as This is a profoundly, powerfully sad book, written by an extraordinary man.

It’s not clear how extraordinary John Healy is till the end of his autobiographical account, which ends presumably sometime before he chronicles his story. The only date that crops up in the book is 1960, when it seems Healy might be about 20 years old, then there is reference to his age of 28, when he’s many years into his alcoholic life. After the bulk of the book chronicles in its timeless fashion his episodic life as a wino, he suddenly enters a whole new realm of being, becoming a world class chess player. This period is also timelessly described, and it is only a small portion of the book. Healy then abruptly leaves chess and seeks something more, which for a while is a mix of hopeful love, yoga, and meditation. His quest and the story he recounts ends when issues of class, social unease, and futility find him seated on the ground in India, using the holy Book of the Guru Gita as a cushion, silent, suspended in indecision. The book’s final words are an ellipsis of more years gone by, chess forsaken and love forgotten.

But to return to the extraordinary aspect of Healy. Even without having any sort of biographical framework for his life—his birth date, the duration of each of his phases of life—it is made clear that Healy somehow endured years of physical abuse as an alcoholic (from other winos, the police, and himself, several times ending in hospital), and yet somehow emerged from the grass arena with his body and mind largely intact. Despite the abuse to brain cells, Healy could play chess well, no easy feat, as it requires a steel-trap mind, an ability to visualize and hold in one’s head game scenarios many moves ahead. This part of Healy was not apparent in his descriptions of the random moments of consciousness, when thirst and drink were punctuated by violence and petty crime or during longer periods when sobriety was forced on him by stints in prison. In retrospect, however, it’s apparent that Healy’s mind was exceptional, that for all the bouts of black-out obliteration, the brains cells fastened tight to vivid and visceral detail that might easily fill the fabrications of a literary novel. His prose is simple and direct, and he avoids trite and clichéd expression, presenting a voice that is direct and unflinching, sometimes touched with a wistful wonder. The violence is blunt and accounted with little emotion, though he sometimes expresses sorrow that a that wino who has, for instance, lost an arm will not be able to long survive in the arena.

Healy enters the arena in stages. His begins his story with accounts of a childhood marred by his father’s brutality. It’s almost literally the first thing we encounter in the book, a kick in the face. His mother, whom he loved, is not able to protect him nor is she able to display much affection, limited in her beliefs to an emotional austerity. His idylls in Ireland with aunts and uncles are the happiest moments in his life, and of these times Healy writes tenderly and almost sensuously and passionately of the people, events, and the play of weather on the landscape. In one extended scene Healy reveals himself ignorant and sensitive: he cannot bear his relatives taking a knife to the frisky bull calves who must be castrated, and he suffers extended ridicule and abuse for his vehement disapproval. But the visits to Ireland always end with a return to his council home in London. Innocently enough, he begins to drink, learns how the alcohol eases the tension and unease he feels throughout his body. He learns to box ably and is successful in several matches, but his drinking soon derails any chance at a career. Each of several short-term laboring jobs end after a weekend of binge drinking, and eventually he’s nicked for petty crimes and given a chance to join the army. Boxing attains for him some status and privilege, but drink, insubordination, and several desertions land him in deeper and deeper trouble. He flees to Ireland, but his several months there come to a close when his uncle can no longer afford to keep him after the season’s heavy work is done. Back in London, he more and more alienates himself from his family, eventually leaving to spare his Mum the shame of his bad black out behavior.

After more than a decade in the arena and in one jail or another, Healy is introduced to chess. He knows that he is trading one addiction for another. But his rapid rise in the chess world, a reconciliation with his mum, and new-found social prospects keep him from anything more than a social drink of wine. There is no backsliding, but there is still no relief from the tensions and social unease that he’d felt as a youth. Coupled with these disabilities, Healy feels himself in the grip of unforgiving English classism, unable to satisfactorily present himself in even middle class settings without anxiety about his working class roots and criminal past. His love for the daughter of exiled nobility has him follow the “Countess” to India to a yogic Ashram. He desperately tries to communicate his affection to her, but she does not return his feelings.

Some years later, in 1988, The Grass Arena is published. The book’s final words suggest the passing of another long period in his life, a period devoid of drink, chess, and love, significantly filled, perhaps, only with his efforts to write his story. There is no joy, however, and no triumph. As much as Healy has achieved, his story is a bitter one and his life seems now almost hollow. But it’s not bitterness that Healy himself expresses, and there is a remote diffidence—a silent despair—in his narrative’s conclusion. It is at this point that, one begins to understand how profound the absence of affection in his life has been. He has long sought, it seems, his mother’s arms—which she would not extend to him unless he were beaten and wounded first. Healy is at heart, it seems, a gentle soul, and he displays a general bonhomie and easy manner with all his mates, in and out of the arena, and there is a gentle, naïve, and almost sexless yearning in most all of his thoughts about women. The contrast, then, between what is sought and what is attained—despite the years slogging and years succeeding—is painful: while his escape from the physical, mental, and moral debasement of the arena should be occasion for celebration, there seems instead only to be a silence of benumbed emptiness, satisfaction cruelly withheld.

[Fact checking Healy’s life after having read this book, I found that he was born in 1943, spent 15 years in the arena, and another 10 as a chess player, which means he spent up to four or five years writing this book.] ...more

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Sep 05, 2011 Mark Delaney rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of my favourite books of all time. Healy - a very intelligent man and son of Irish immigrants, recalls a brutal period of his life as a down and out in London. Mingling with prostitutes, murderers and alcoholics, it's hard to see how anyone would see light at the end of the tunnel. Healy manages to bring the characters out from the pages, and holds no punches on his accounts of the savage experiences of life on the streets.

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Jul 27, 2011 Darran Mclaughlin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: british , biography

Very good. It's really interesting to read a memoir of a street drinker. Recommended if you like reading culty underground London books and low life tales. Makes Bukowski seem like a model of restraint and gentlemanly conduct. The ending is a bit sad.

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Dec 08, 2012 Benjamin Portheault rated it 5 of 5 stars

The masterpiece that takes you by surprize to a world you did not knew about. Miles from the drunken tales of the American masters, John Healy has a very distinctive voice as he takes you from the Euston gardens to his chess redemption.

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Mar 19, 2013 Chris Geoghegan rated it 4 of 5 stars

A thorough and precise account of what it means to be a true alcoholic straight from the horses mouth. Despair and repair told in an endearing fashion that will have you finishing the novel in one sitting.

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Jun 21, 2012 Larry rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those books when you complete the final page you ask yourself..."can i recommend this to anyone I really care about?" Its not that its not mesmerizing and a truly unbelievable true story but the cost of completion is so taxing on the spirit and psyche. Page after page after page of horrors of addiction, violence, and degradation of living on the streets of 1970's London is a challenge. Especially out of 190 pages (thankfully short book) only the final 10 pages are somewhat of a re ...more

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May 27, 2013 Nigeyb rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Perhaps like all all great books, it leaves you permanently altered." Colin MacCabe in the book's Afterword.

A unique insight into the world of the alcoholic vagrant. It's reminiscent of some of Charles Bukowski 's work, although - unlike Bukowski - John Healy had no safety net, no rented room, and no employment. He and his fellow vagrants get injured, maimed, die by accident, and get murdered, and all the while their only focus is on their next drink.

That John Healy was able to create the opport ...more

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Nov 08, 2014 Eileen Ryan rated it 2 of 5 stars

What is remarkable about this book is that John Healy wrote this extroadinary account of his life in such an objective and talented fashion. The subject matter doesn't make for an enjoyable read but the honestly is frank and admirable. It is a stark insight into the life of an individual where alcoholism overrides all that is good in human nature. Healy portrays it as it is. Be prepared for a bleak but honest read.

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Mar 26, 2009 Barry Cotter rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 23, 2014 Niall rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this, but I did buy it because I wanted to hear about his chess career, which only shows up in the last few pages of the book, and is barely touched upon. Overall, a really poignant memoir, which is a type of book I don't read a lot of.

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Jul 28, 2011 Derek Baldwin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this in a big hurry as a buyer had reserved it. For about 80% of the way this was enthralling stuff (it's about the chaotic life of a homeless man). But then, when it gets to the "chess saved my life" stuff, the vigour seems to leach out of the writing. In a funny way if the story had ended less "happily" it might make a better book. I just didn't find the latter part very convincing. If John Healy really loves chess how come he couldn't convey that? Perhaps deep down he loves chaos more? ...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Mandy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Heard this praised to the hilt on Radio 4's A Good Read, looked on here and loads of 5* reviews. However, I found it tedious and repetitive, written by a self-destructive and very unpleasant character who didn't show any remorse for any damage he'd done, and although he may have had some sort of reason for his alcoholism, that doesn't excuse him, and doesn't make it an interesting read. There's only so many drunken binges you can read about without becoming irritated by his behaviour. Not for me ...more

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Jan 17, 2011 Andrew Mcq rated it 4 of 5 stars

Interest in this book has hopefully been reignited by the broadcast of a documentary on the extraordinary life of the author, John Healy, and the reissue by Penguin Modern Classics. It is an important read from the margins of society, frightening in its honesty. John's redemption is never fully realised, as this is real life rather than easily-digested entertainment, but the fine-line balance between empathy and revulsion is what makes this book, and this life, most revelatory and rewarding.

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Feb 26, 2014 David Bamford rated it 5 of 5 stars

Just the most gripping and searingly honest autobiography I have ever read.

"Simply Superb"

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Sep 10, 2013 Lisa O rated it 2 of 5 stars

One of our bookclub reads.... I can understand why people recommend this book as its story is so relevant to many people around us and its amazing how he turns himself round through chess but I found reading this book was depressing maybe reading during the winter months wasn't a good idea, bleak days and long nights, but no tater how much I tried I just couldn't come to even like picking it up and struggled to finish it... In saying that I'm sure lots of people will enjoy it...

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Mar 05, 2014 Russell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Brilliant,harrowing & indispensable....

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Oct 09, 2014 Christopher Bradley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Awsome!

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Preview — Modern Classics the Grass Arena by John Healy

Modern Classics the Grass Arena: An Autobiography

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Trivia About The Grass Arena: ...

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Preview — Modern Classics the Grass Arena by John Healy

Modern Classics the Grass Arena: An Autobiography

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Books by John Healy

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