A searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir in which David Baddiel exposes his mother’s idiosyncratic sex life, and his father’s dementia, to the same affectionate scrutiny.
On the surface, David Baddiel’s childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all.
Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman.
David’s detailing of the affair – including a hilarious focus on how his mother turned their household over to golf memorabilia, and an eye-popping cache of her erotic writings – leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong.
Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother’s affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.
My Family: The Memoir is David Baddiel’s candid examination of his childhood, family and memory offering a twisted love letter to his parents.
REVIEWS
'Genuinely one of the funniest books I have ever read. I wept with laughter' HADLEY FREEMAN
‘Baddiel has made true art out of experience … A masterpiece’ SATHNAM SANGHERA
'Laugh out loud funny … The read of the summer' THE SUNDAY TIMES
‘This book is WAY WAY WAY TOO MUCH in all the best ways. I lost count of how many times I gasped’ CAITLIN MORAN
‘As funny and moving as you’d imagine – actually, more so’ ADAM KAY
'By all that's holy this book should not have seen the light of day. By all that's unholy we rejoice it has. Infernally funny' HOWARD JACOBSON
Hardback
Language: English
Extent: 368
Publish Date: 4 July 2024
ISBN: 9780008487607
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Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Imprint: Fourth Estate Ltd
