The Looked-after Kid

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incredible - Rated
Paolo has always been a fine writer, but this book is a revelation. It's beautifully written, with a wry humour and scorching honesty, but without a hint of self-pity. It also reveals Paolo as a man of integrity and compassion and more often than not his words seek to understand rather than blame and avenge.
This truly is moving stuff, and as fine a book as I've ever read.
Read it!
If you're thinking of becoming a parent, a foster parent or working in social services, read it twice.

the greatest soul book. - Rated
i find it a beautifull thing that for the length of his career paolo has written great works that deal with artists who are soulfull.
yet its the story of paolos childhood that became the most soulfull tale i'll ever read.

paolos own soul shines brighter than any1 he's written about.
beautifully written............. so strong, strong, strong.

i thank paolo hewitt for this book.
its been a while now but this story was / is a massive turning point in this boys life.

shine paolo, shine.

vincent cain

A Moving and Compassionate Memoir - Rated
"Time", writes Paolo Hewitt, "makes you old too soon, smart too late and, as part of the deal, it also robs you of the chance for revenge." Not that The Looked After Kid, an intimate and frequently harrowing memoir of life growing up in children's homes throughout the 1960s and 1970s, is a belated exercise in score-settling. Surprisingly not; taken from his mother at two days old, Hewitt was placed in care, and spent much of his formative years under a dark cloud of fear and loathing, primarily at the hands of an abusive foster mother - then a succession of blithely incompetent social workers, tactless teachers and oxymoronic carers.

Effectively orphaned (his mother's internment in a psychiatric hospital ensured only sporadic, limited access), with an absent, untraceable father, the Anglo-Italian's uneasy reliance on an ever-changing cast of surrogate parents, with their own set of agendas, imbued him with the perspective of the rootless outsider eternally looking in - ironically, a criticism occasionally levelled at him today; significantly, his Christian name - the cornerstone of identity - will also undergo several changes throughout his early years, from Paolo to Paul, and Paulo (even, bizarrely, 'Paola').

Only now, approaching middle age (and it's very peculiar to think of the former NME writer, passionate biographer of the Jam, Oasis and all things Mod as anything approximating middle aged), has he begun the process of breaking down the "deep layer of ice, vast and strong", that had been created inside him. "There is a light in this world that can keep it at bay", he writes in his epilogue. "It is made from pure love." That shouldn't infer Hewitt is any kind of saint - nor craves a living martyrdom; "Beware the unhappy", he cautions, "for theirs is the sweetest revenge of all." However, as Irvine Welsh has noted, it's entirely this absence of malice or bitterness that elevates the book from the smug, solipsistic bleatings so prevalent in other, best-selling 'overwroughto-biographies'. Elevates - and enlightens, throwing light on past persecutors with great insight, humour, and a humbling generosity of spirit requiring exceptional courage and compassion.

This book is about being human, and what it means to be human. Mostly, it's a public service: for those in care; for those with loving families; for those without; for those who ever suffered at the hands of those less fortunate them themselves; for those who ever rode a bike through the air with a pumping heart and sheer faith in the laws of gravity; for those who waited till the shopkeeper looked the other way; for those who ever lost themselves in a pop song; for those who ever woke in the middle of the night; for those whose spirit has been crushed; for those who have begun the process of picking up the pieces of their lives; for those whom love has turned its face; for those who love. I love this book. It's a great book.