Examined Life

James Harpur entered a boys boarding school in the 1970s and survived to tell the tale. Powerful, poignant and humorous, the poems in The Examined Life re-create a vale of soul-making that, with its tragedy and comedy, heroes and villains, is like a microcosm of life itself. A quite marvellous workan Odyssey, a Ulysses shaken up in the snow-dome of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. From the foreword by STEPHEN FRY James Harpur entered a boys boarding school in the 1970s and survived to tell the tale. His sequence of poems is a searingly honest and compelling account of his five-year journey, from leaving home for the first time and sleeping in a dormitory in which enemies appear like shadows, to his sadness at his parents separation and the death of a father figure from a bomb. For as well as Prog Rock, flared trousers and industrial strikes, this was the era of the Troubles. An introvert in an extraverted world, Harpur took refuge in Homer and the magical world of Troy, and found that school could be a haven, and even fun: a sex education lesson that backfired; a rare sighting of girls at a dance; a scary ride on his brothers illegal motorbike; a surreal trip to Covent Garden. Powerful, poignant and humorous, The Examined Life re-creates a vale of soul-making that, with its tragedy and comedy, heroes and villains, is like a microcosm of life itself.