Here is a memoir by someone whose father joined a cult. It is a lot less interesting than it sounds. I am often surprised by how little the circumstances of someone’s life seem to affect how involving their memoir is. This one I found quite dull. I feel bad to say so, because it was clearly deeply felt. Most troubling for the author was her father’s late descent into alcoholism. The degree of surprise and helplessness she feels was – I hate to say it – especially dull. Many people have done the hard miles on writing about being an addict, and loving an addict, and it’s not very easy to add anything to this, no matter how strongly you feel it.
Also annoying was some gentle name-dropping. This is always bad, but it’s particularly bad when you don’t even know who they are dropping. I find this to be a particular affliction of upper and upper-middle class British writing, and speaks to the narrow provincialism of that demographic. Antonia Fraser’s MUST YOU GO remains the high water mark of this kind of thing, and I highly recommend it if you want to LOL.