This book was full of surprises: from the funny to the heartbreaking to the sublime. Also equal parts frustrating and rewarding, I never quit wanting to learn more about Stuart. ( )

As Alexander Masters says at the beginning of this book, there are many different types of homeless people:

'There are those who where doing all right beforehand, but have suffered a temporary setback because their wife has run off with another man (or surprisingly often, another woman). Their business may have collapsed. Their daughter has been killed in a car crash or both....

Then there are the ones who suffer from chronic poverty brought on by illiteracy or social ineptness or what are politely called 'learning disabilities'. Perhaps they are dyslexic, autistic, shy to the point of inanity, never went to school ....

The youngsters who have fallen out with their parents, or have come out of care and don't know what to do next or even make their own breakfast, they're a third homeless category ....

Ex-convicts and ex-army - take away the format of their lives and all they can do is crumple downwards ....

Right at the bottom of this abnormal heap are the people such as Stuart, the 'chaotic' homeless. The chaotic ('Kai-yo-ic'), as Stuart calls them, are beyond repair.'

Alexander Masters first discovers Stuart begging in a doorway around the corner from Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. From these inauspicious beginnings, when Stuart announced 'As soon as I get the opportunity I'm going to top meself', Alexander and Stuart develop a somewhat unlikely friendship. Alexander is working for a homeless charity and when the directors of the charity are convicted and imprisoned for allowing drugs to be supplied on the charity's premises, both men are key members of the action group that is trying to get the conviction overturned. The development of Alexander's friendship, and frequent utter frustration, with Stuart forms the foreground of the book. Alongside this Alexander looks backwards over Stuart's adult life and childhood to try and discover what went wrong with his life. And a lot has gone wrong with Stuart's life, from glue-sniffing, to drug addiction and alcoholism, from minor crime to car theft, robbery, violence and possible charges of attempted murder. There are reasons why Stuart is known as 'Knife Man Dan' and 'that mad bastard on Level D' to the other homeless of Cambridge city centre. And yet Stuart is also seen as a success story by the social workers and homeless charities that deal with him, and is extraordinarily convincing in his work for the action group.

This is a fascinating, if not very cheerful book, that throws light on a lot of the issues faced by homeless people. Stuart never lived to see the book published, stepping in front of the 11.15 London to King's Lynn train. Recommended. ( )

This is the biography of a very disturbed homeless man the author met when they both got involved in a campaign to free two jailed charity workers. It sucked me right in, & taught me a lot about a section of society I knew nothing about. Not in a way that made me sympathetic, but it gave me a new level of understanding. I enjoyed the writing style a lot - the author got to know Stuart on a personal level more than a subject-author basis & so a lot of the reflections are so real, like the comments you may make about your own friends when they annoy you or show a sensitive side. As a result you as a reader don't just view Stuart as a subject or character, but as utterly real. His life is a very sad story, but the book doesn't milk that or play on that. It simply works backwards through time trying to find the one thing that turned Stuart into the mess he was as a grown man & finds a tangled ball of threads all equally weighted in making him who he was. ( )

There is not alot I can say about this book that has not already been said by other people on this site except to say that it is the only book that I have ever finished with tears streaming down my face! At the beginning of the book i really disliked Stuart but as I got further through the book I was drawn to his character and what had happened in his life to make him the way he was. I would reccomend this book to anyone who has ever looked down on a homeless person - you don't known what caused them to be in that situation. ( )

One of those books that I would call "important" if it didn't sound so trite. Stuart's story is not only engaging, it makes you think. Masters' perspective on homelessness is refreshingly balanced and utterly honest. The ending of the story was flawless - I could read it over and over again. ( )