This is a book about St. Anne's estate in Nottingham and the life of some of the residents who live there: the estate studied back in the 1960’s by Coates and Silburn, in their now infamous study Poverty: The forgotten Englishmen, that was pretty notorious then and it remains so today. Of course, St. Anne's today is typical of many similar estates up and down the country. Notorious locally – and sometimes nationally – for their association with crime, drug use, unemployment, welfare and poverty. Accounts of life on estates and the experiences of those on poverty are relatively commonplace but what makes McKenzie's, book unusual is her position as researcher but also as ‘insider’. She lived on the St Anne's estate for many years. She thus brings to the research, and the subsequent analysis and writing, her own experiences of the issues she set out to study. I found myself wondering what happened next to some of the colourful, memorable and largely likeable characters that are introduced in the book. Overall the book is an honest and sometimes blistering account of life at the sharp end. What McKenzie aims to do is to get behind the dominant narratives around estate life and deliver the ‘backstory’ (p. 3) and she achieves this well.

What is perhaps most interesting in the book is the ways in which different explanations and understandings of working class life are aired. It is here that the book excels in bringing to life the realities of life lived in hard circumstances and the ways in which people respond to troubling experiences and harsh life conditions. It was the ways in which the working classes were increasingly portrayed as ‘old fashioned, silly and backward’ in the 1980s (p. 7) that inspired McKenzie's journey to undertake this research. This trend towards demonising the working class has only escalated over time, with welfare claimants, even those who are seriously ill, being increasingly misrepresented and demonised by both the popular press and those with responsibility for their welfare. The life experiences and the difficulties which blight the day to day existence of McKenzie's interviewees leads to frustration and sometimes anger and violence, as people are faced with ‘fighting brick walls’ with no one seeming to either ‘listen or care’ (p. 93). McKenzie is not afraid to show the darker side of life even if she wrestled with her conscience about how the accounts might be perceived or misused. Yet what shines through so well in the book is the braveness, resilience and sheer tenacity shown by people simply trying to get by in circumstances that often conspire to prevent them doing so. Tyler, a young black man, is determined to get to the University of Nottingham and study for a degree. His life has been, like most in the book, full of hardships and setbacks. He lost his son to meningitis. He lacked the qualifications needed to study or the social, cultural and economic capital that make this an accepted or realistic option. He studied on an Access course but he was still knocked back and was told he actually needed A level maths at grade A or A*. He did not give up and studied again. He achieved a B. To their credit the university admitted him and the book leaves him doing well in his studies, but also struggling to fit in to a largely white middle class institution: ‘It makes me feel like I'm a real common ghetto scumbag to the maximum’ (p. 97). His, like many of the life stories in McKenzie's book, are both difficult yet often inspiring to read.

There are some tensions and critical questions that arise from the book. What is it that makes people like the author and others like Tyler, break away from the traditions and expectations of their working class lives and break through into different life worlds and experiences when the majority don't? That people remain close to where they are situated through the lottery of their birth is perhaps much easier to explain (and of course, this applies as much, if not more so, to the rich). McKenzie does a brilliant job of showing how the estate offers comfort, security and safety for her interviewees, in spite of the inherent insecurity that pervades much of their lives. It's an important part of their story. Staying put, quite simply makes most sense. To try to move on to something different is fraught with risk and difficulty as Tyler's case shows. McKenzie's book also wrestles with the thorny questions of structure and agency and what role individuals’ own behaviours play in keeping them in place. There is perhaps more work to be done on these questions but of course, no one book can do everything.

At the start of the book McKenzie reflects on her own life and how she came to transition from her working class beginnings to her life as a scholar working in a prestigious university. She talks of the feelings a reading of ‘On the Road to Wigan Pier’ invoked in her when George Orwell reveals that as a member of the upper middle class he was taught that the lower classes smelt. To that point, at age sixteen, McKenzie had been raised to believe that the working class – her class – were the ‘backbone of the country, strong and proud’ (p. 2). This seems to be a defining moment in McKenzie's own transition and was the start of a long journey to her current position. In the current context and with the narrowing down of routes to social mobility one can't help but wonder if her rather unusual journey will become an impossibility for future generations.