Don't Mess With The Best Author:Sean Egan Barry Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave, Stan Barstow's Joby, Bill Naughton's The Goalkeeper's Revenge, Keith Waterhouse's There Is A Happy Land, David Storey's Saville... In the esteemed tradition of British working class childhood depicted through fiction comes Sean Egan's superb collection Don't Mess With The Best. In these fifteen tales descr... more »ibing the adventures, escapades, high jinks and set-backs of children and teenagers, Egan captures the 1970s as acutely as did the aforementioned writers their eras. Whether writing about a skinhead who realises that his hard-man status means nothing to a woman interviewing him for a job, a ten-year-old tomboy whose kindness nullifies the embarrassment produced by peer pressure in her new, male best mate, a 13-year-old who realises to his horror that a girlie magazine he has hidden in his mother's flat has disappeared, a boy who is swept up by the illusion of being as tough as his playmate with humiliating results, or a football hooligan whose crushing anonymity is replaced by exhilarating fame on match days, Egan's powers of observation, flawless ear for speech and technical dexterity make for a collection bursting with life and studded with pleasures. Two former winners of the greatest prize in British fiction, the Booker, have garlanded this collection already and more laurels are sure to come for an author who grants us an incisive view of a fascinating and rarely seen segment of the world.« less