Kevin Lewis grew up on a council estate in South London. Beaten and starved by his parents, ignored by the social services and bullied at school, he was offered a chance to escape this nightmare world and was put into care. Despite his best efforts to make things work out, his life spiralled out of control. At the age of 17 he became caught up in the criminal underworld of London, where he was known as 'The Kid'. From the violent anger he suffered at the hands of his mother and father, to the continuous torments at school; from the way in which he coped with rejection from people he trusted, to suffering from bulimia and a wish to take his own life, Kevin succeeded in making a better life for himself. This is his story.

Customer Rating:
Summary: I couldn't and didn't put this book down.
Comment: Once I began reading, I couldn't stop. I read the book cover to cover in four straight hours. Kevin's message is that all children are worth saving from abusive and dysfunctional homes, no matter what age they are.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Kid
Comment: When I read this book I was stunned, how can anyone do that to a little child?? People say that if your abused as a child you never really get over it and you aften become abusers yourself, this book proves that, thats not true!

Everyone that reads this will be touched by it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable and informative read...
Comment: The sort of family you land into when you get born is very much the luck of the draw. Each of us could have been born a king, or a pauper; could have been born into a good family or a bad family; could have been born into a starving African family or, wherever, whatever. Who you are - your background - the inputs and education you receive - it's all down to luck. Sperm and ovum combine: you gestate; you arrive. You are part of a family, good or bad.

This book is about a lad who was born into a crappy dysfunctional sort of a family: suffering a bad upbringing in a filthy house with the sort of people as parents who arguably ought not to be allowed to become parents in the first place; overlooked by the social services, who ought to have intervened and taken away; having to try to pick up the pieces; trying to recover in later life from all the disadvantages that one gets from a bad upbringing. He still carries the scars, deep in his mind.

We are all, in some ways, victims of circumstance, in where we find ourselves in life.
This book is well-written, simple to read, a quick read, and worth reading.

I wasn't clear why paperwork just arrived from social services in Chapter 29: was this just a convenient invention by the author, to further explain his background? Why were confidential papers sent? That was a point that left me puzzled as it wasn't explained.

Overall: 5/5 - Worth reading.

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"There's a brand new dance but I don't know its name
That people from bad homes do again and again
It's big and it's bland full of tension and fear
They do it over there but we don't do it here."
~ David Bowie - Fashion

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Oh My What A Book!!!,
Comment: It will bring tears to your eyes what this child went through, it will make you want to scream out at the parents of this boy. But, this child prevails. With Courage and Determination he writes about his life in this remarkable book. This is an absolute must read book that ranks up there at the top with Nightmares Echo, A Child Called It, Running With Scissors and Sickened.
My final words are: read the books,learn the signs and help stop this from happening around our silent ears

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