Blood Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds RIDAY BOOKS 7

A poem about his boots, or example, lea es no room or anything but direct re lection: "These boots ha e... been washed in the blood o murder ictims / Ha e been allowed into a mosque. " But, elsewhere, there's ery little e idence o a real author at work. E en the poem is blighted by its last line: "Ha e been stared at by a daughter while I was telling them their mother had died." Mistakes aside, it's the persistent dumb moaning that really makes this book a depressing read. It all adds up to a picture o someone who spends his time trying to preser e something essentially human amid the bureaucracy, cant and pre ailing market orces o modern li e.

Blood, Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds ( RIDAY BOOKS ?7.99) Tom Reynolds is an Emergency Medical Technician working or the London Ambulance Ser ice. Based on his online diary, "random acts o reality", this catalogue o his thoughts co ers the daily e ents o an emergency medical team. In his diary extracts, he's sometimes just plain grouchy ("It seemed unlikely that Classic M could get worse but it has"), in other places he's indignant (he writes o the con lict in Iraq: "the war can only be waged because the UK and US ha e armies o mercenaries"). Untold Stories was compiled while he was under what he describes as a " death sentence", a ter being diagnosed in 1997 as ha ing cancer and told his chances o sur i al were no greater than 50 per cent. Whate er reser ations he had about seeing aspects o his li e committed to the page aded away. Other actors pushed him to crack on with this enormous olume o miscellaneous prose: a "speculati e biography" recei ed a muted response in 2001; and his sur i al coincided with a time when he ound himsel unable to write almost anything, apart rom autobiography, " with no plot needed and the story almost gi en".

The reader learns, then, about his homosexuality; the aw ul ate o his mother who succumbed to mental illness; and his ather's death. So many memoirs are touted as being "poignant", but ew ha e Bennett's bleak and o ten bitter humour to set beside dismal e ents and make that word really hold true. Untold Stories by Alan Bennett ( ABER ?9.99) Bennett's pre ious collection o autobiographical work, Writing Home, was criticised by some or being too guarded This is a ery di erent book. Each one o these stories is su used with doubt, so much so that readers might e en be compelled to gi e up working out what the author meant, and enjoy their own readings instead. Surely that's all Meek intended? As the little girl sitting on a pier in "The Return o the Godlike Narrator" points out: it's a good pier - howe er much the man who built it tries to con ince her it's a causeway. Those who do will be richly rewarded - i you can't, there's always Harry Potter The title piece is a particular case in point. I you read the story closely you can unra el themes relating to materialism and consumerism: "The ewer things you own, the less human you are, and the harder it is or you or anyone else to understand whether you' e got a li e at all," a salesman-come-demon tells Adela, owner o the Museum o Doubt.