"Breaking the Chain Abuse, Revenge and Redemption: The True Story of a Damaged Childhood" by Andy McQuade

 

A Book Review by Alain English

 

I first met Andy McQuade a few years ago.  It was a brief encounter at the Lion and the Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town.  I had gone to see a performance of Pushkin's "Little Tragedies" staged by Act Provocateur in which a friend of mine from Aberdeen, Scott Christie, was appearing in.  I had arrived early and Andy caught me at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the theatre.  He told me quietly that the show was not ready yet and to wait in the bar, which I did.  There are two other things I remember from that night.  One was how Scott seemed to imitate our teacher back in Aberdeen with his portrayal of an elderly miser, the second was Andy's performance.  He acted with a lot of intensity and passion and he memorably closed the show with a rousing guitar solo.

 

A few months later I saw Scott again with the same company, doing a one-man play called "Pigeon Man Apocalypse" by William Whitehurst.  It was about a Arthur Cork, a homeless man who had gone on the run after murdering his alcoholic mother.  Act Provocateur later took this show to the Edinburgh Fringe, only this time with Andy playing the role of Arthur Cork.  The publicity for the show included an article in the Times by Carol Midgely describing the parallels between Andy's history and that of the character he played on-stage.  At the age of twelve, Andy drove an axe into the head of his abusive father and (although his father survived the attack) he later ran away from home, finding himself homeless and adrift on the streets of London.  It was this interview that kicked off the journey that led to the publishing of this book last year.  The result is a surreal and really honest book that strikes a chord in it's clarity and lack of bitterness.

 

It is not for the faint-hearted.  Andy's tales of domestic violence, though never played up for effect, are nonetheless horrifying.  But whereas the media might take the easy way out and show the father just to be a heartless monster, Andy goes another way and shows his dad to be as much a victim as a persecutor.  This goes beyond the usual stereotypes and creates a much broader understanding of such people and what motivates them.

 

The second part of the book takes on a different and more varied dimension - his description of his psychic and surreal experiences with drugs had me shaking my head with wonder yet they are described with the same raw clarity that underpin the rest of the book. 

 

Andy is as upfront about his own faults as he is about others, and there is a distinct lack of blame for the course of his life.  At the end of it you feel not a sense of catharsis but that of a journey that has barely begun - the long walk as Andy himself puts it.  It is this that makes his story very positive and life-affirming and well worth reading.