Sand in Strange Places is about growing up in civil strife-torn Northern Ireland in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and life in a cultural backwater, filled with religious zealots and country & western fuelled Stetson-wearing alcoholics, mired by small town myopia.
And… Richard’s growing desperation to escape the place.
Richard presents a brutally frank but often humourous account of his childhood and adolescence, learning to survive the worst that a boarding school education could throw at him; one which involved narrowly escaping expulsion, and surviving the threat of having his testicles cut off by a British soldier.
He gives a frank account of the physical and sexual abuse he was subjected to at his preparatory school… supposedly one of the top schools in Ireland (now long closed).
He narrates how – as an only child – he negotiated the demands, expectations, hard love, and ultimately disappointment of parents who regarded parenthood as an investment of time and resources – and one which required unconditional payback.
He relates how his journey from short trousers to flannels took him from academic neo-prodigy to academic failure.
And he shares with the reader the often-bumpy sexual road that takes him from boyhood into manhood, his brief but capricious rock’n’roll career, and how he achieved the recognition that only two other writers (Oscar Wilde and Sam Beckett) managed to achieve.
Yet, despite all his customary negativity, Richard maintains a deep affection for the country of his birth.
But there’s no way on God’s green earth that he would ever go back to live there again.
In summary – if you like your cliches – Sand in Strange Places is a tale of sex, booze and rock’n’roll, set against the backdrop of the Troubles and the clutches of filial despotism.
PRAISE FOR RICHARD’S MEMOIR:
“I’ve always considered him [Richard] to be a complete idiot – this book confirms it beyond reasonable doubt.” John Smith, (former) friend.
“There is way too much information about really … like, gross stuff that I’d rather not know.”
Rosie ********, daughter (and former beneficiary of Richard’s will).
“This book is written by my English teacher. Before I am reading it, I am thinking he is unusual but practically normal. How wrong was that what I had been thinking.”
Mikhail Smirnoff, Ukrainian ELF student, and Space Cadet