I learned that it's not enough to give affected people a house to live in. It taught me more about the plight of homelessness that anything I've ever watched or read. However, it also delves into the horrendous abuse Stuart experienced at this age, and this goes a long way to explaining the problems he struggled with in later life. He battled with muscular dystrophy, which marked him out as different in school, but he was mostly a happy-go-lucky boy. The story goes all the way back to his childhood and we discover that Stuart wasn't always like this. We find out about his time in prison and what he had to do to survive there. We learn about his life on the streets - the alcohol and drug addiction, the many fights that he got into, the injuries he sustained. The second timeline examines Stuart's history in reverse.
He also comments on the book Masters is writing and points out mistakes in it, lending the biography a very meta feel. He is scattered, forgetful and prone to bouts of rage. But it is clear he is suffering from poor mental health. He has been given a small flat to live in and scrawls in a diary to keep track of the various activities he has planned. Some chapters occur in the present, where Stuart is doing his best to keep things on the straight and narrow. The book has two timelines running through it. The two men became friends and agreed that Alexander should write Stuart's life story. They campaigned together for the release of Ruth Wyner and John Brock: homeless shelter proprietors who were incarcerated when drug-dealing had been unknowingly carried out on their premises. In the late 1990s, the author Alexander Masters met a homeless man, Stuart Shorter, on the streets of Cambridge.
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