L. Moore

Oxford is my hometown and I spent a lot of my childhood and teenage years in and around Temple Cowley. All the familiar haunts were there – Florence Park, Iffley Road, Donnington Bridge, The Cowley Centre, Holloway, Cowley Road, Bonn Square, Blackbird Leys and the Westgate Centre, but all seen through unfamiliar eyes. That’s where Sharon lived and friend Cyril knocked up a shed. That’s the best place for successful shoplifting. That’s where Dan and Katie shot up. That’s where an show more old lady was mugged. That’s where NA met up, opened up, drank coffee and bantered. That’s where an arm got gratuitously sliced open during an armed robbery. That’s where Katie sold her body to old men to feed her habit. That’s where the deals went down. Hard Food isn’t for the faint-hearted. It contains graphic descriptions of drug use, child neglect and abuse, prostitution, grievous bodily harm and domestic violence. It’s short, sharp and shocking and it’s extremely thought-provoking. Switching between the perspectives of active addicts and recovering addicts, the downward spiral and the upward struggle, Hard Food is a compulsive read ending with not one but two killer twists. show less

This reads like a biography of composite characters, yes, almost... gasp... stereotypes. We have the drug dealers. We have the hard drug users where the male is from a troubled background and the female turns to prostitution to buy her drugs. We have the recovering addicts and, literally, 4 page soliloquies from them that reflect the same stories as our composite characters.

This would be fine, except all the characters (except the drug dealers who speak in gansta and fucks, but do leave the show more story early), use multiple adjectives and full sentences to describe their actions and feelings and thoughts...

So we don't get pulled into the darkness that is their lives as much as we feel like we are reading about the darkness that is their lives.

This is probably a good thing though. I think that most of us can't even imagine how big and putrid a cesspool these drugs create...

I just wish there was a happier ending...
But I guess that's where the biography feel comes from...
This isn't really a story. It is a description of hard drugs' impacts... with a pinch of sexual abuse tossed in. show less

Overall I enjoyed the book, but struggled a bit with the dialogue.