John Healey’s The Grass Arena follows the life of John, who is moved from Ireland to London. A tough childhood whereby his father and the local teenagers all beat him senseless soon amounts to his alcoholism. At lightening speeds, the story progresses into John’s life as a young alcoholic and how he ends up being recruited, locked away, arrested and left homeless.

Although repetitive at times when showing John and his addictive lifestyle, the story is powerful and effective in that you lose a sense of time. However, the reader should be ready for an extremely fast paced story, as the book loses a sense of rhythm when it abruptly jumps from childhood to adulthood. The Grass Arena can be funny, morbid, depressing and shocking. This is partly down to the writing style being quite articulate at times, but also rather blunt and aggressive at others.

The harshness of the story is what accounts for the superb realism felt whilst reading. The reader will feel as if they were in John’s own shoes. This dramatic story is not one I would recommend for the young, but late teens and up due to its graphic nature. The gradual path of degradation John takes as well as his ups is one that the reader will not forget in a while.