O Brother by John Niven

A memoir that is by turns heart-breaking and hilarious, O Brother evokes a working-class childhood of the 1970s and 80s and tries to answer the questions of guilt, culpability and regret that often haunt the survivors of suicide

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.'

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'Oh my God, this book! O Brother feels like war-level reportage from the nuclear-blast that suicide inflicts on a family. The honesty is unflinching, the humour night-black, and yet the sheer energy and power of the writing means you can, as I did, inhale it in just two sittings. A book whose genuine importance is only equaled by its sheer, visceral, compulsive readability' - CAITLIN MORAN

'Absurdly well-written, painfully funny and painfully painful' - ADAM KAY

'As moving, scalding, funny and harrowing as any memoir I've ever read' - IAN RANKIN

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Hardback

Language: English
Extent: 384
Publication Date: 24 August 2023
ISBN-13: 9781805300588
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Publisher: Canongate Books
Imprint: Canongate Books