Book Review: Someone To Talk To

Abstract

the area is described. At the same time, these descriptions are suffering from a lack of any interpretation, and cannot aspire to the name of thick description. Moreover, some of the descriptions are somehow generic and definitely not class-related. For example, while Gorman's picture of school bullying (violence, ridiculing, etc. in peer groups) reveals some truth about this social phenomenon, at the same time, it does not apply solely to the working class; bullying can affect all children regardless of class or place. The third main problem with the book is that Gorman does not even try to compare his own case with similar works, for example, by Carolyn Steedman (1986) and Christine Walley (2013), only noting their existence in passing (p. 6), which shows a serious lack of engagement with the field. Despite the narrow focus of the book, the uniqueness of some of Gorman's ideas must be questioned, as many ethnographies and other analyses of similar neighborhoods are available, inter alia the works of Jonathan Rieder (1985), Marianna De Marco Torgovnick (1997), or Walter Thabit (2003), to which Gorman refers only loosely. He also notes, but only refers to in passing, a book of stories about growing up in that time and place, written by his old friend Tom Crockett (2015). To sum up, it is worth emphasizing that Gorman gathered rich and differentiated material which comprises memories, informal interviews, social media hangouts, and biographical materials, such as a letter cited in full and a complete study program. Nevertheless, the structure of the book should have been thoroughly rethought; because some parts seem unnecessary and contrast with brilliant pieces of sociological analysis. Sometimes less is more.