Beg, Borrow, Steal

An unusual and captivating memoir by the acclaimed author of Hurry Down Sunshine

‘Michael Greenberg, a native New Yorker, loves the city as a child loves a parent, and in its honour he has put together a collection of tightly written, incisive chapters, each another tessera or tile in a big mosaic ... Michael Greenberg is an acute observer' New York Times

‘They are short snapshots of memoir, beautifully observed ... This is the perfect bedside book split, as it is, into neat insomniac chunks' Scott Pack

In Beg, Borrow, Steal Michael Greenberg regales us with his wry and vivid take on the life of a writer of little means trying to practise his craft or simply stay alive. He finds himself doctoring doomed movie scripts; selling cosmetics from an ironing board in front of a women's department store; writing about golf, a game he has never played; and botching his debut as a waiter in a posh restaurant.

Central characters include Michael's father, whose prediction that Michael's ‘scribbling' wouldn't get him on the subway almost came true; his artistic first wife, whom he met in a Greenwich Village high school; and their son who grew up on the Lower East Side, fluent in the language of the street. Then there are Greenberg's unexpected encounters: a Holocaust survivor who, on his deathbed, tries to leave Michael his fortune; a repentant communist who confesses his sins; a man who becomes a woman; a Chilean film-maker in search of his past; and rats who behave like humans and cease to live underground.

Hilarious and bittersweet, Greenberg's stories invite us into a world where the familial, the literary, the tragic and the mundane not only speak to one another, but deeply enjoy the exchange.