Already, Too Late: a boyhood memoir [B format edition]

In post-war Glasgow a primary school class was set a composition topic: a memorable family event. Each child completed the assignment – all, that is, but one. 
Why didn’t you write about your family?
Please, miss. I didn’t, I didn’t know what to write.
But now, he does.

In Already, Too Late, Carl MacDougall, one of Scotland’s most accomplished and celebrated literary writers, presents a memoir of extraordinary authenticity and honesty.

This memoir takes us through MacDougall’s early years, in Fife and then in Springburn and a care home in East Kilbride.

Within this world, now teetering on the brink of our collective memory, sits a single-parent household of German descent; money is tight, trauma roams free and tragedy comes calling again and again.

Through a powerful mosaic of stories, MacDougall strips away all rose-tinted sentimentality to create a vivid account of heartbreak, dissociation and loss.

Already, Too Late is the early life of an outsider looking in, a changeling child, displaced, alone, and – in his own grandmother’s words – ‘no right’. Because for some, even the very beginning is already too late.