"In our family there's just Dad and me... and the meat—rump, loins, chops—red, rich meat, the bloodier the better. Dad was always saying I had to be tough like meat, can't be a sissy. He was always comparing me to it. If Mum had given birth to a rump steak 21 years ago, instead of me, I reckon Dad would be the happiest man alive."

Jimmy is an artist. His dad, Brute, is a butcher with short, stubby unartistic fingers. In Boy Slaughter Jimmy relives growing up in a small town with big characters—and his desperate escape from it all.