Here is a memoir by a man with TEN SIBLINGS. For added drama, he grew up in Ireland during the Troubles and he lost his mother when he was five. You can see where the pitch for this book wrote itself.
It had some funny parts. For example, the title DID YOU HEAR MAMMY DIED?, refers to the question he kept asking people at his mother’s wake. He was too small to understand what it meant, and was rather enjoying being the bearer of important news. He was bouncing on his bed when he told his aunt:
“‘If you want to see her, she’s in the dining room,’ I added helpfully, punctuating this sombre death notice with a commemorative belly flop”.
He also described one Irish village as so picturesque it was as if it had been ‘bitten by a radioactive postcard’ which I found hilarious. This book has been something of a bestseller, and I can see why. And yet somehow it did not quite work for me. I am not sure how to explain. I think it was because it lacked heart. In some ways, this does not make much sense, as there is much here that is sincere. He talks a lot about his grief for the mother he hardly remembers. He is still ashamed, strangely, of his behavior at the wake. And yet still, I could not really enjoy it. Perhaps it is just that bit too polished? It’s was a bit like reading a few hundred pages of a dinner anecdote that has been told once too often.