Susanna Harding

Here are two delightfully entertaining and interesting pieces of writing, very different from each other but both offering a real insight into the city of Birmingham, and linked by the same historical event. Maria's story 'A Silver in the Quarter' tells the fictional story of a boy growing up in Birmingham in the 1970's. His gruff dad has a silversmith workshop in the Jewellery Quarter and has to make thousands of silver lockets each Christmas, and one particular Christmas - when his dad takes him on his first adventure into the city - he keeps a locket as a souvenir. In 1974, a little older, and now in love with Lisa Hagan, he visits the city again to attend a school concert at Birmingham Town Hall on 21st November but events take an unexpected turn. Maria unfolds her cleverly crafted story with the confident vernacular of a masterful storyteller, weaving threads of narrative that play out in a very satisfying way as the story develops: it is at once captivating, gritty, humorous, and moving - reminding us of how events in our childhood can suddenly throw open new perspectives of the complexities of the places we grow up in. Stewart Lee's autobiography of growing up in Birmingham takes us on a magical mystery tour of the quirky and eccentric in the city, particularly focusing on the comedian's love of punk rock and a statue of an ape. Not having lived in Birmingham for long, Lee questions whether he is a fraud to be writing a book about about the city's cultural past, but at the same time he - and we - find out that we are discovering lots of gems about this city, and relishing the way in which stories from our childhood - however brief the glimpse - can often be revisited when we are older and somehow discovered for the first time. Lee's self-effacing nostalgia trip becomes a really interesting delve into the hidden stories of a city that has not always been quick to recognise their value. The story of the ape is a masterpiece of research and tenacity. A thoroughly good read. The different style and genre of the two writers complement each other perfectly.