Wild Life: 'compelling Investigation Into the Dark Instincts of Masculinity' Guardian

Wow! This book took me by surprise!Having absolutely LOVED this author’s previous book, Real Monsters, I was so excited when I recently discovered he’d written more books for me to feast my eyes on. Of course, having experienced Real Monsters, I really shouldn’t have been surprised by Wild Life. However, I completely fell into the whole successful, wealthy businessman overindulges with alcohol, drugs and gambling, walks out on his old life and leaves his family after being made redundant during the recession, and lives happily ever after in his new self-sufficient life in a park, growing his own veg and doing daily yoga. Oh what a comfortable ending that might have made.I’m not a very materialistic person. I hate wasting money. I’m scared of taking financial risks. I’ve only just opened my very first ISA just before turning forty! Just reading about gambling raised my heart rate. I don’t like to borrow money, as owing money stresses me out, so I’ve always saved hard before buying things, except for getting a mortgage, which I’ve been paying back double the amount required every month for the last few years. So for me, I was bothered by the wasteful behaviour at the beginning of the book. Then I was satisfied by the idea of being completely self-sufficient and surviving without the need for money. This part of the story made me feel content and strangely comfortable, except for the running. I couldn’t do all that running!Then shock horror! The story takes a sickeningly dark turn and it all begins with a swan. A beautiful bird. How can this be? I’ll never look at a swan in the same way again! Imagine if there was a sequel to Lord of the Flies, when the boys were all grown up. This could be it! Through two thought provoking novels, this author has shown how good he is at showing the truly dark side of human nature. A brutality we so often close our minds to in the hope of wishing it away, for fear of discovering it within ourselves or those close to us. As it’s not possible to read this book with your eyes closed, if you make it to the end of this book, consider your eyes very much open on this subject.This book left me with such mixed emotions. I started off feeling quite proud of myself for being sensible with money. Then satisfied while I daydreamed of growing veg, collecting eggs from free range chickens and being at one with nature. Then I felt sick. Then I felt afraid. Then I felt angry and a dislike of human behaviour, especially violence and self-destructiveness was rapidly growing inside me.I was out walking with my dog the other day, and there was some sort of reed grass growing in a couple of puddles. It looks a little out of place against all the broom and heather, but that grass has found a new home with the conditions that help it flourish. I’ve probably walked by that reed grass for years not even noticing it, but after reading this book I saw that grass and had an overwhelming feeling of respect for it. That grass is where it needs to be to grow strong. It is causing no harm to anything around it, and it’ll probably outlive the human race and deserves to. This book has got me considering whether nature is more intelligent than humans, or whether humans are too intelligent for their own good. Can I say whether this book made me feel good or bad? I’m not sure I can be sure, because my thoughts are a little messed up at the moment. Either way, this book got me thinking, that really deep kind of thinking. Oh, how I do love a book that does that to me.Also, am I the only person who had Blur’s Parklife song going round and round in my head the whole time I was reading this?I highly recommend Wild Life, as well as Real Monsters, which actually made it into my Top Ten Books in 2015.I borrowed this book through Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

As the title suggests, Wild Life by Liam Brown is not a sober story comfortable within the confines of the ordinary and the every day. Instead, protagonist Adam Britman takes the reader on a downward spiral into a nightmarish underworld.Adam is an accounts manager for a digital marketing company, husband, and father of two. A self-made success it would seem, only his work style and his own propensity for addiction lead him, with the assistance of his little plastic bag of white powder, headlong into alcoholism and gambling. Adam is Dionysius gone wrong. He doesn’t seem to know it but he’s on the archetypal hero’s journey, one filled with the trials and tests and tribulations of the initiatory transition to manhood. His fall is sudden, dramatic, and absolute. He loses his job, walks out on his family, and ends up, drunk, on a park bench.He’s found by a trickster figure reminiscent of Santa Claus, and welcomed into a cult of homeless men ruled by a bully bent on back-to-earthing, boot camp style. These are not wild men. They are feral, a by-product of shallow, hedonistic, consumption-driven late-capitalism. And as the story unfolds, the reader wonders if Adam will ever find his way out.Composed in the style of an older, wiser man looking back on a younger, foolish self, Adam’s is an acidic confession. The wry and self-admonishing prose, laced with gritty hyperbole, makes for a face-paced and intense read.“No, the pros understand that the best way, the only way, to tell a lie is to swallow it yourself. Better still, you have to let the lie swallow you. You have to commit to it totally; to eat, breathe and s*** the lie twenty-four hours a day until it becomes part of you, inscribed not only on each and every strand of your being, but on the genetic code of future generations of relatives yet to be born.”There’s a forward drive to the writing, and a punchy, urban beat. Little space given over to introspection; Adam is not an especially thoughtful narrator. Yet this is the story’s appeal. And while Adam may not be all that reflective, there is much for the reader to reflect on, not least the nature of depravity.It’s hard to pull off what is essentially a coming of age story, albeit of a man suffering a kind of arrested development the result of his decadent lifestyle. Brown succeeds with a story of betrayal and brutality, that serves as the antidote to Robert Bly’s Iron John.

This book is not for everyone. Adam has it all. Good job, home, family, etc. But then the economy crashed, so did Adam. We then witness his decline. Not able to handle losing his job, he does things that has him end up on the streets. He finds himself in an underground homeless shelter. This is his life now. There were some times in the book where you have to let your imagination run wild, but overall, this book was good. I enjoyed it. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

I received a copy of Wild Life free via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.Not for the faint hearted, or weak stomached this is a gripping, nightmarish tale of a man's nightmarish decent into an underground homeless community living hidden from society in an abandoned park. I found it to be a very readable, interesting and thought-provoking story. To me it lacks credibility in parts, and there are rather sudden leaps in the characters' psyches and behaviour which could have been developed and explained more thoroughly, but overall a good read.

Wild Life is about advertising executive Adam and what befalls him when he pushes his excesses to their limits and loses everything.As things reach desperation point it heads squarely into Lord of the Flies territory & reminds us that we are all of us never that far from the beast within.An entertaining if slightly far fetched read.

This book has made me late for work, helped my diet and made my insomnia a pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Liam Brown's Wild Life, and struggled to stop myself reading 'just one more page'. It's a tale that takes the reader on a journey. Every image, smell and taste come alive, so much so that it's more like watching a movie than reading a book. I am now suffering from am end of book void that only a damned good read can bring on.... More from this talented Birmingham author cannot come soon enough.

This seemed like a very convincing story of addiction and it’s consequences; but if anything, that’s the under-story. From a reasonable premise, this takes a quite bonkers, it believable, turn. A very good story: kind of a fable for modern times.

Disturbing but enjoyable right up to the moment when the men try cannibalism. It then became too unreal for me. Nevertheless, a worthwhile read.

Thoroughly enjoyed, made me laugh,cry and empathise. You can't help but like Adam, flawed as he is, and root for him throughout. Great piece of writing