Welshrats by Jim Bowen is thought-provoking, funny and sometimes shocking, it highlights life in the ‘care world’, the complex challenges that face social workers in the battle to keep it real, the business jargon that mars policy making and the pre-austerity ‘jobs for life’ attitude of his colleagues.
Henry Antrim is a social worker hooked on dope and one night stands. His loathing of red tape and obsessive desire to do the right thing puts him in constant conflict with his bosses. He has his deceased mother’s rosary in one pocket and a three pack of condoms in another. Set in Swansea’s Catholic community in the mid-2000s, Welshrats by Jim Bowen is a highly topical, genre bending novel.
As a very real human being, Henry struggles to survive. Fumbling from one challenge to the next, he goes though a dark period in his life, but with luck, hope, and a great deal of help from his friends, he survives and ultimately triumphs, proving true his dying mother’s adage: ‘God never gives us more than we can carry.’
