Customer Reviews

Road to Nab End

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It's a cliche to say "I couldn't put it down", but this time it's true. I found the book utterly enthralling and deeply moving, and not only because I grew up in Blackburn myself. It was written with passion, humour, commitment, and a wonderful eye and ear for remembered detail. This was no mere plodding blow-by-blow account of the author's childhood and youth; the memories were organised into thematic chapters, many of which could stand alone as sensitively crafted short stories in their own right - I think for instance of the intensely moving chapter about his visits to his maiden aunts in Bamber Bridge.

At the same time, the book conveys with extraordinary immediacy the human, social and political reality of a crucial moment in our national history. Above all, like any work which concentrates on being intensely specific, it achieves the status of universality in its implications.

The book was given to me as a Christmas present. Next Christmas, my friends and relations will be getting it - if I can wait till then to tell them about it.

This story had a special significance for me as the author's hometown, Blackburn, is also my hometown. He was 7 years younger than my father although they attended the same school. However, I am certain the book will be enjoyed by many people who do not have that same personal connection.
It is beautifully written, with the historical content merging skillfully into the story of family life.
The book will be of particular interest to anyone who grew up in an industrial area, not just in Britain; to Americans and Canadians who can trace their families back to the mill-towns of Lancashire or Yorkshire; to anyone who finds the 1900-1930 period fascinating; to anyone who remembers their own family's struggles against adversity, and to anyone who enjoyed Angela's Ashes - but would prefer a more down-to earth story with fewer funerals!

Forget ANGELA'S ASHES. THE ROAD TO NAB END is less bleak, it is witty and relieved by warmth and humor. The story of a city boy, born in the mill and growing up in grinding poverty is relieved by an unsentimental irreverence for conventional piety, enlivened by his forays into the gentle Lancashire countryside, the love of family and an impossible teenage romance.Bill Woodruff tells it as it was. I know because I was there. Although we both found our way to America, Blackburn of the 20's and 30's is indelibly printed on our souls.

One thing that poverty didn't diminish is Woodruff's powers of recall. Though, as soon as he becomes literate, one senses he'll inexorably transcend his meagre beginnings which ring most vividly in this tale. I loved the regional patois as much as the rising political conscience of the working class boy. The years roll by with the daily grind, humilities accompanying the unjust disenfranchisement of workers; Dickensian conditions that were worse in Lancanshire than other industrial zones. Woodruff's effortless prose is as tough as his father's persistent presence and as nuanced as his mum's mercurial mood shifts. Fortunately for readers,'Nab's End' is no end, but a beginning to further tales from post adolesence. Having just closed the covers on Roy McFadyen's, 'at A Cost', I opened Woodruff to discover a parallel story in times bedevilled by poverty and dire economic depression. If you want to visit the comparison and find, at a pinch, an even more extraordinary childhood,'At a Cost' is published and distributed by its author @ 15 Maryann Street, Golden Beach, Queensland, Australia 4551.

William Woodruff, like one of the Old Master artists, has marvelously painted a story with a wordbrush filled with many colors. His descriptions of his experiences as a young lad draws perspectives that lead direct to the heart. One cannot read this book without coming away with a greater appreciation of the good and the bad of life's offerings. It is inspiring to learn that from such stressful challenges a warm, sensitive and perceptive being can and did survive with such an encompassing and compassionate view of humankind. Woodruff exposes many of life's experiences, that in many ways, we all share.

The Road to Nab End describes the life of a boy growing up in an English mill town in the early years of the 20th century. Here comes to life a proud working-class family that struggles against unemployment and poverty. As they face hunger and eviction, they become resourceful: when they are freezing in bed, they add layers of newspaper, as well as all their clothes! A case of appendicitis is cured with hot bread poultices. The book preserves unforgettable vignettes of a life that might have been forgotten, and it does so with a great sense of humor.

(...)

Months ago I reviewed this book for Amazon.co.uk as follows: A fine example of English literature. Praise to anyone that can write so plainly and with such power and feeling. All I have to add now is that I am convinced that as with Dickens this book will be read and reread.

I've found this book to be one of the most compelling books I've ever read.

Reading this book is like stepping through the looking glass. You become part of this family, experiencing their laughter and their tears. And at the end you wish it would go on - so you turn the pages back and reread the most moving parts.

William Woodruff was an academic who spent most of his life in America, but "The Road to Nab End" is a memoir of his childhood growing up in Blackburn, Lancashire during the 1920s and 1930s as the son of a worker in a cotton-mill. As in much of Lancashire, the spinning and weaving of cotton were the town's main industry and the source of most of its wealth. The author made his name as an economic historian, so had he wished he could doubtless have written a history of the rise and fall of the Lancashire cotton trade. This being a work of autobiography, however, rather than of academic history he spares us most of the facts and figures, but there was one statistic which surprised me, namely that during the decade between the General Strike of 1926 and the mid-thirties two-thirds of all days lost to strikes in Britain took place in the textile industry. This suggests that pay and conditions for mill workers during this period must have been particularly poor even at a time when working-class Britons, in all industries, were going through the hardships of the Great Depression.

Certainly, life for poor working-class families was hard even during times of economic boom, which generally meant prosperity for the employers rather than their employees. The Woodruff family (mother, father and four children) lived in a tiny, two-bedroom weaver's cottage, which was not only cramped but also damp, insanitary and lacking in basic amenities; they had very little furniture, and only basic clothing. During a period of relative prosperity in the late 1920s they attempted to move to a larger house, only to be evicted when the father lost his job in the Depression. The book's title refers to the slum district to which they were forced to move after their eviction.

Yet "The Road to Nab End" is not an example the modern vogue for the sort of autobiography which bookshops categorise as "tragic life stories" and which is more generally known as "misery porn". There is as much emphasis on the lighter side of life as there is on poverty and hardship. Like most schoolboys, the young Billy Woodruff did not spend most of his time obsessing about the harsh conditions into which he had been born, but rather with getting on with his life and having as much fun as he could. His greatest joy seems to have been to escape from the smoky, polluted town, either on trips to the seaside or by roaming the surrounding countryside with a gang of his friends. (The freedom which children were given during this period to wander freely would horrify most modern parents).

The book is notable for its gallery of characters. Woodruff draws vivid portraits of his family- his father, proud and independent yet haunted by the suffering he witnessed during the Great War; his gentle mother, his troublesome brother Dan and his grandmother Bridget, originally from a genteel, well-to-do family in Ireland and now trying desperately to keep up appearances in straitened circumstances. He has an equally keen eye for detail in his brief sketches of minor figures- his teachers, his employer Mr. Grimshaw, his two eccentric maiden aunts Grace and Betsy.

My interest in this book initially derived from the fact that my mother's family were also from Blackburn; my great-grandfather was, like Woodruff's father, a cotton worker, and I discovered that the Woodruffs actually lived in Griffin Street, the same street as my great-grandparents. (One reference in the book may possibly be to my great-grandmother, although she is not mentioned by name). There is, however, a lot in this book to fascinate even those who do not have a direct family interest. Woodruff's skill in delineating character, his fluent writing style and his sharp eye for detail reminded me of Laurie Lee's "Cider with Rosie", another autobiographical account of a working-class childhood set during the same period, although Lee came from a rural rather than an urban area and appears to have enjoyed a more idyllic life than Woodruff. This is an excellent book, both as a personal memoir and as a piece of social history.