Tag: memoir

O Brother By John Niven from Canongate Books

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O Brother By John Niven

Published by Canongate Books on 24 August

What They Say

John Niven’s little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. In 2010, after years of chaotic struggle against the world, he took his own life at the age of 42.

Hoping for the best while often witnessing the worst, John, his younger sister Linda and their mother, Jeanette, saw the darkest fears they had for Gary played out in drug deals, prison and bankruptcy. While his life spiralled downward and the love the Nivens’ shared was tested to its limit, John drifted into his own trouble in the music industry, a world where excess was often a marker of success.

Tracking the lives of two brothers in changing times – from illicit cans of lager in 70s sitting rooms to ecstasy in 90s raves – O Brother is a tender, affecting and often uproariously funny story. It is about the bonds of family and how we try to keep the finest of those we lose alive. It is about black sheep and what it takes to break the ties that bind. Fundamentally it is about how families survive suicide, ‘that last cry, from the saddest outpost.’

What I Say

There are different ways you come to read books – some you read as soon as they are in your house, others linger on your shelves until you find them again or you decide that it’s what you want to read at that time. O Brother had arrived at my house a couple of weeks before, and when I was trapped in my dining room with my dog and my oldest son – (long story, boring anecdote) I picked it up, started reading, and just couldn’t stop.

The story starts with John being told that his younger brother Gary is in hospital in Irvine, Ayrshire. After ringing the emergency services, telling them he had been trying to kill himself, Gary was taken to hospital. After being assessed, Gary was placed alone in a room where he attempted suicide again. He was induced into a medical coma, and the family are faced with the realisation that he may never wake up, or that if he does, the brain damage he has suffered would mean that Gary’s family would have to look after him for the rest of his life.

To understand how Gary and John’s life has come to this point, John goes back to his childhood, to tell the story of the two brothers, and later of his sister Linda, and a compelling and heartbreaking story emerges from the two seemingly very different brothers. They are inseparable when younger, both of them getting up to things that will make every parent who reads it (and every child who has done something they know they shouldn’t) wince in recognition. As the two boys grow up, it is clear that their lives will take very different paths – John into the music industry, Gary into a world that involves drug dealing and the occasional carpentry job.

Yet both men are flawed, hellbent on pleasing themselves while causing worry for those closest to them, but John eventually makes the decision to stop and change his life when he realises he is now responsible for a family. Gary meanwhile, although a father and in a relationship, can’t settle, and deals with prison and drug and mental health issues – and when offered help, doesn’t turn up for appointments. In spite of the tireless work by the mental health team, Gary repeatedly goes it alone. The relationship between the brothers and between Gary and his family becomes strained – punctuated by Gary wanting money and help from his family, and the frustrations they feel as they attempt to live their own lives, while constantly on edge, waiting for the next incident they have to get involved in.

At no point does John depict himself or his family as the saviours, the ones who sweep in and save Gary, and this is what makes this memoir even more relatable – because these are normal people dealing with an extraordinarily difficult situation. You absolutely understand how challenging and complex this was for everyone involved, and that although the family may be geographically distant, they are all united by the familial bonds that keeps them together through all the life changing events they endure.

It would also have been easy to demonise Gary, as the unreliable and unlikeable sibling, but John depicts his brother with compassion and tenderness, acknowledging that there are many sides to his brother. Gary loved being the centre of attention, and was mischievous and funny. Yet he could also be cruel, violent, and testing, demanding everyone’s time and money, and causing untold heartache for them all.

Perhaps in writing this memoir, it gave John the chance to reflect not only on the life his brother had led, but also to process his own emotions about what it means to lose someone who decides that the family you are part of is not a strong enough reason to want to live. I can’t imagine what that must be like for anyone, but in reading this book, I feel that I understand so much more about it, and can see the incredible resilience and dignity that John, his Mum and Linda have in dealing with it all.

O Brother is one of the most affecting memoirs I have ever read, ostensibly because John is talking about something that touches us all – what it means to love your family. However complicated, layered or marvellous our family is – we know it is the connections and emotional shorthand we all have, and the fact we so often take it for granted. The in jokes, the nick names, the shared memories, the mundane but necessary evenings in front of the telly, and the times when we couldn’t be closer, and those when we are far apart.

The last chapter completely broke me, and I defy anyone not to be incredibly moved by it. John perfectly captures the culmination and celebration of a life that ended too soon, and the hope that we all have, in reading O Brother, that in death, Gary could finally find the peace and comfort he could not find in life.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Anna Frame and Canongate Books for my copy.

Seventeen by Joe Gibson

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Seventeen by Joe Gibson

Published by Gallery UK and Simon and Schuster on 20 July

Available from all Good Bookshops

What They Say

It’s 1992. Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life – smoking, Britpop, girls. He’s looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university when his teacher – attractive, mid-thirties – takes an interest in him. It seems like a fantasy come true.  

For his final two years at school, he is bound to her, a woman twice his age, in an increasingly tangled web of coercion, sex and lies. Their affair, a product of complex grooming and a shocking abuse of authority, is played out in the corridors of one of Britain’s major private schools, under the noses of people who suspected, even knew, but said nothing. 

Thirty years on, this is Joe’s gripping record of the illicit relationship that dominated his adolescence and dictated the course of his life. With a heady dose of nineties nostalgia and the perfectly captured mood of those final months at school, Joe charts the enduring legacy of deceit and the indelibility of decisions made at seventeen. 

What I Say

You may have seen on my Twitter feed that I talked about a book that had stopped me in my tracks, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I read it (you can possibly tell by the number of post its in my copy in the picture!)

Lots of people were curious to know, and so today, I can tell you that the book I am talking about is called Seventeen. It is a memoir written by Joe Gibson (this is a pseudonym), which tells the story of Joe, as a seventeen year old, who had an affair with his thirty five year old teacher called Miss P.

Joe was awarded a bursary to study at a private school which was 150 miles away from his parents. They sorted out accommodation for him with some family friends, who were caring people, but basically left Joe to do what he wanted to do. He finds a group of friends quite quickly, and settles into school life, but then discovers that his Dad is leaving and his mum and dad are getting divorced.

Understandably upset, and realising how far away from home he is, he goes to a pub to drown his sorrows. It is there he bumps into Miss P, who listens to and comforts him and Joe realises that he is attracted to his teacher.

One evening Miss P asks him to help her tidy up the classroom, and they eventually end up at her flat where they drink wine together and kiss. Very quickly, this turns into a fully blown affair, and Joe, although he knows this is his teacher, and this is not right, realises that he loves Miss P – or Ali, as she now becomes to him.

Joe’s seventeen year old voice comes through very clearly throughout the memoir. He at times seems almost proud of their relationship, their sex life, and relishing the time they spend together, desperate to see her again, yet also still having to be the person his friends know. He has to be the seventeen year old they know – half listening to his friends as they debate which girls in their classes they fancy, trying to maintain the facade of a normal student, but harbouring this secret that he knows would blow his whole world apart if it ever comes out. So he says nothing.

What becomes clear to the reader very quickly is that this is not an equal relationship. Miss P controls every aspect of it – she devises the most incredible plans, comes up with the complicated and seemingly safe logistics to make sure that they can see each other, but also making sure little by little that Joe is entirely under her control. Miss P decides when and where they can see each other, she ignores him for periods at school, and taunts him about being a school boy when it seems that he is trying to think for himself.

As they become more and more involved, Joe distances himself from his friends and family, his school work starts to suffer, and his hopes of going to Oxford slip from his grasp. At the same time, his relationship with Ali intensifies, and her insistence that they spend time together in increasingly dangerous ways are to be honest, jaw dropping to say the least. Joe is so far entrenched in this relationship that he can’t see what we all can – that he is powerless, and entirely under Miss P’s control.

Seventeen honestly reads like fiction -as if Joe and Miss P are characters in a novel that you read, talk about and put on a shelf. Of course this is a memoir, these are real people, and their lives still go on. One of the most incredible parts of Joe’s story is what happens to the relationship – and no, I’m not going to tell you what that is.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Seventeen when I read it because I have so many questions. Why Joe? Had she done it before? Why didn’t the friends she told report her? What was her motive for getting involved with Joe? Was Ali telling the truth about her past relationships at all?

Yet something else supersedes all that, because I keep thinking about my seventeen year old son and what it would be like for him if it happened to him, and that is what Joe illustrates so clearly. At the very heart of all this, we need to understand that Joe is a seventeen year old school boy, and Miss P is his thirty five year old teacher.

It should never have happened, but it did, and if Seventeen does one thing, it made me start a conversation with my own son about what had happened to Joe, and how that behaviour from an adult is never acceptable. We also learn that it wasn’t until 2000 that it became illegal for a teacher to have a sexual relationship with a 16 or 17 year old – which makes you wonder how many times this story played out in other schools, and what happened to those people whose stories we may never know.

This is why I think it’s such a thought provoking memoir, because it made me stop and think about how I communicate with my son – when Joe was seventeen, there wasn’t social media and mobile phones, you had to either use the home phone or find a pay phone to contact someone, or even go physically to see them. Here and now, our teenagers are so busy looking down, connected to a world we can’t access, it is harder and harder to really find out what is happening in their lives, and that is why Seventeen is such an important book.

Now more than ever we need to be present for teenagers, to make sure that Joe’s story is something that can’t happen again. Joe says in the acknowledgements that he hopes by finding his voice seventeen years later, and articulating his experience that he can encourage other people to do the same. I think Joe has also started a timely conversation about power and control and needing to make sure that in a time of digital communication where we aren’t party to everything that happens on a screen that we don’t forget about simply talking to and listening to our children too to make sure Joe’s story is not repeated.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Sabah Khan at Simon and Schuster for my finished copy in exchange for an honest review.

brother do you love me by Manni Coe and Reuben Coe

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brother do you love me by Manni Coe and Reuben Coe

Published by Little Toller

Available from Little Toller Website and All Good Bookshops

What They Say

Reuben, aged 38, was living in a home for adults with learning disabilities. He hadn’t established an independent life in the care system and was still struggling to accept that he had Down’s syndrome. Depressed and in a fog of anti-depressants, he hadn’t spoken for over a year. The only way he expressed himself was by writing poems or drawing felt-tip scenes from his favourite West End musicals and Hollywood films. Increasingly isolated, cut off from everyone and everything he loved, Reuben sent a text message: ‘brother. do. you. love. me.’ When Manni received this desperate message from his youngest brother, he knew everything had to change. He immediately left his life in Spain and returned to England, moving Reuben out of the care home and into an old farm cottage in the countryside. In the stillness of winter, they began an extraordinary journey of repair, rediscovering the depths of their brotherhood, one gradual step at a time. Combining Manni’s tender words with Reuben’s powerful illustrations, their story of hope and resilience questions how we care for those we love, and demands that, through troubled times, we learn how to take better care of each other.

What I Say

I have really struggled with writing a review of brother do you love me. The reason being is that I want to share endless paragraphs and pages and chapters with you, to show you how brilliant Manni’s writing is, and how perfectly Reuben’s words and illustrations show us what their relationship means to them. This is a memoir that is quite unlike any I have read, and it moved me deeply.

Manni was living in Spain as a tour guide, and his brother Reuben who has Down’s Syndrome was living in a residential home. Reuben sent Manni a text message that read ‘brother.do.you.love.me’. As soon as he read that message, Manni knew that his brother needed him, and that Reuben had to be out of that care home as soon as possible. When Reuben moved in with Manni in a cottage in the UK, Manni was shocked to see how far his brother had regressed physically and emotionally, and was desperate to get his brother back.

This is a memoir not only of the incredible bond that Manni and Reuben have, and how their love for each other transcends the frustrating limitations that the professionals tried to constrain their world with, but is also a book about the realities of caring for a family member when you know exactly what they need even if those in positions of power disagree.

Their situation is further complicated by the fact that Manni’s partner Jack is in Spain, and the rest of their family are spread throughout the world, so even though everyone is involved and supporting them, Manni is the one dealing with all the day to day decisions and being the support for Reuben on his own. What echoes throughout the book is the fact that on one hand, for Manni, having your brother who is also your best friend, living with you is the best thing, but at the same time caring for Reuben and trying to help him regain his confidence as well as dealing with all the people and teams who are involved is also incredibly exhausting and isolating. I know from my own experience that you spend so much of your time convincing the people making the decisions that honestly, yes, you really do know your family member so much better than the snapshot they have gleaned from all the forms and phone calls you have been forced to repeat time and time again.

One of the elements of the book which I think will resonate with many people, is the way in which Manni describes the realities of the social care system in the U.K. It is one stretched to its limits, with those people who use it often become little more than a set of initials moving from team to team as decisions are made sometimes with the family involved, and sometimes not. One of the worst things (and I am speaking from personal experience) is how often you find someone who absolutely understands the person you are caring for, and what they need to thrive, only to have them move on or leave, and you are left either without no one, or a new person that you have to explain everything to – never quite sure if you have said the right thing, or told them enough, or too much.

As Manni tells their story, he weaves his family’s narrative in effortlessly, as we learn everything about their family, from their childhood in Leeds, to the rift that happens when Manni tells his religious family that he is gay, to their reconciliation – and always at the heart of the story is the love and determination that the family and their friends have to ensure that Reuben is happy and living the life that he wants. In doing this, Manni also subtly shows us the difference between the Reuben of those times, and all the things they did together, and the Reuben who is now a very different man. Manni perfectly articulates not only the all consuming love you feel for the person you care for, but also the ingrained hope and desire you have for them to be accepted by the world and for them to live the life they want, rather than the life that others feel they deserve.

The book is also filled with the art that Reuben has produced, which adds an intensely personal and emotional element to the book, and Reuben also talks about having Down’s Syndrome and what that means to him. We learn how he feels about the world around him, as well his own hopes and dreams for his future. I think it’s one of the most important parts of this book, that Reuben’s voice and identity are so clear and we learn so much about him and his personality, and his relationships with his family and friends.

I wanted to finish my review by saying thank you to Manni and Reuben, who helped me think about my own situation and my own relationship with my son, who has a range of special needs, and I am his full time carer.

I know am guilty of doing too much for him, for sometimes treating him like a child at times even though he is twenty two, and for thinking I know how he feels, and not really trying to make him do any more than I think he can cope with. Hearing how Manni and Reuben talk together, and Reuben talking about himself and his identity have really helped me reassess how I relate to my son, and has opened up a whole new world for us, and for that, I can’t thank them enough.

I don’t often say this, but please try and read this book however you can. #BrotherDoYouLoveMe is not only an incredible testament to the love that Manni and Reuben have for each other, but is also a book that absolutely captures the realities of caring for a family member, and how important it is to ensure that what they want and deserve is always at the front and centre of every decision that is made.

I absolutely loved it.

The Year Of The Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

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The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Published by Tinder Press on 19th January

Available from West End Lane Books and

All Good Bookshops

What They Say

I looked around at my flat, at the woodchip wallpaper and scuffed furniture, and realised that I did have a life after all. What it didn’t have in it was a cat.

When Rhiannon fell in love with, and eventually married her flatmate, she imagined they might one day move on. But this is London in the age of generation rent, and so they share their home with a succession of friends and strangers while saving for a life less makeshift. The desire for a baby is never far from the surface, but can she be sure that she will ever be free of the anxiety she has experienced since an attack in the street one night? And after a childhood spent caring for her autistic brother does she really want to devote herself to motherhood?

Moving through the seasons over the course of lockdown, The Year of the Cat nimbly charts the way a kitten called Mackerel walked into Rhiannon’s home and heart, and taught her to face down her fears and appreciate quite how much love she had to offer.

What I Say

The pandemic and lockdown we all went through now seems for me to be a time I can remember parts of, but also feels slightly surreal, like it happened to someone else. It is also undeniably a shared collective memory that will forever unite a generation who lived through it, and I am endlessly fascinated to read people’s accounts of their experiences as a way to understand mine.

The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett takes us through that period as Rhiannon and her husband decide to get a kitten, and while this memoir may start as a love letter to cats, and the irrefutable impact that they have had on women’s lives and the stories that surround them, this book evolves beautifully into one that holds so much in its pages.

This is a book not only about Rhiannon’s experiences of owning cats through her life and how Mackerel her kitten came to be such a part of it during the pandemic, but it is also an honest and visceral memoir about trauma, PTSD, mental health, motherhood, family and caring.

Adopting Mackerel during such a strange and unknown time, when going outside became something we would never take for granted again, means that as well as focussing on Mackerel and how to look after him, Rhiannon has plenty of time to be alone with thoughts and memories. Unimaginable events that Rhiannon has lived through – a vicious assault by a stranger, and being in Paris at the very time terrorist attacks were taking place, leads her to think about her past and future, as she contemplates whether having mental health issues impact her ability to be a mother.

What Rhiannon captures so perfectly in these pages is the thoughts that so many of us have, but are afraid to articulate for fear of being judged for having them. I had an overwhelming desire to have children, but believing that my own emotional shortcomings and the fact that I didn’t know if I could care for a human being when I found it difficult to look after myself, led me to write my own lengthy diary entries as to the pros and cons of me taking that step. Reader I did, which for my first child led me down paths I never dreamed I would ever follow.

This leads me to the other part of Rhiannon’s memoir that resonated deeply with me as a full time carer, and led me to use up all the post it notes I had to hand. Rhiannon’s brother is severely autistic and in a care home, and the lockdown leads to a heartbreaking separation for them. What Rhiannon does so wonderfully in her memoir is not only to articulate what it means to not be able to visit the ones we love, but also what it means to care for someone who has special needs. The love you have is overwhelming, but like Rhiannon and her Mum, you cannot explain to someone what it means to be a full time carer unless they have lived it. To understand what it means to be in a constant state of fighting for everything and explaining repeatedly the same story told in numerous ways according to which professional and which department you are talking to. Rhiannon writes with an innate compassion and understanding that made me teary a few times, because I knew exactly what she and her Mum were feeling.

To read Rhiannon’s memories of living with her brother and mother, and the highs and lows of that time, along with some brilliant anecdotes – including an unforgettable supermarket visit I don’t think anyone will ever forget, added another layer of humanity to this unforgettable memoir, and I loved it. As Rhiannon starts to question her own ability to be a mother, we as readers already know that her lived experiences have given her so much experience already, and that we will her to see what an amazing Mum she will be, and hope she gets exactly what she desires.

The Year of The Cat will connect with many people in many different ways because Rhiannon writes about her own experiences with such candour that you cannot fail to be moved. It is also the first time I have read a book that describes so perfectly the numerous internal conversations about motherhood and the responsibilities of caring for someone else which I had before having children, and that that are still part of my world twenty one years after having my first child, which is why I will endlessly recommend Rhiannon’s book.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Mary-Anne Harrington and Tinder Press for my gifted proof copy.