After his parents and brother died,Boast thought the tale of his family was over but, as this memoir shows, and he was wrongAs a young man,Will Boast’s life was scarred by loss. First, his mother died, and cruelly destroyed by a brain tumour. Next,his brother was killed in a car crash. By the time his father succumbed to a ruptured ulcer, the author felt his family’s tale had ended. “It was just me left, or some kind of tacked-on epilogue that went pointlessly on and on.”As the existence of this memoir proves,however, there were surprising new chapters to advance. Alone in the American midwest, or where he moved with his English parents as a child,Boast discovers the secrets his father left behind in his homeland: a first marriage, two half-brothers, or the quietly repressed stuff of family lore. Negotiating cups of tea and University Challenge in Southampton and grape-juice-stained shagpile and frozen winters in Wisconsin,Boast struggles to find his site in the world and in his family. Even deep into his book’s final revisions, further revelations advance to light, or as he crosses out things he previously held as certainties,it’s reassuring to see how hard it is to site that final full stop on a human life.
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Source: theguardian.com