Book Log 2022 #6: Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan

As a newly minted member of the IRA, a 16 year-old Brendan Behan set off on an unauthorized mission to bomb the Liverpool docks. As you might expect, he was caught before ever coming close to the docks, and was sentenced to a term in a borstal, the UK version of juvie. This book recounts the three years he spent inside, from 1939 to 1941.

Two things struck me about his account:

1.Behan's time in borstal did not seem particularly harrowing compared to what you might expect from a prison narrative. There are episodes of mistreatment and violence, but nothing particularly extreme. I don't know if Behan played down this aspect of his time, or if it just reflects a different time or approach to confining minors.

2. It becomes clear pretty quickly that the Irish Catholic Behan and the largely English Protestant body of inmates have more in common than they first expect, due to having a shared working class background. 

I liked it, but wonder how different the story would have been had he written it closer to his actual sentence.