Source: Review copy from the publisher, for the Random Things tour – Thank you!
Back in the very early days of this blog, I reviewed Griffiths’ second novel, Saving Caravaggio – a thriller with depth about an art cop on the trail of a missing Caravaggio – it was one of my first 10/10s on the blog. I haven’t managed to read his other two novels, although I do own a copy of Betrayal in Naples, his debut. Saving Caravaggio‘s application of the artist’s technique of chiaroscuro to the noir form has stayed with me though, so when I read that Griffiths had written a memoir, I stuck my hand up like a shot.
The Wrong Son was a profoundly affecting read, from the title through to its conclusion. To go through life with the feeling that you were the ‘wrong son’ was a terrible burden for Griffiths.
It begins with his father in 1963 before Neil is born. His father is in a car crash with his first wife, Dorothy, who was heavily pregnant, and their young son Michael; only he survived. He starts an affair with Neil’s mother, who was still married to Ron. But persuades her to leave her husband and also to leave her young daughter Toni with her father. When she asks,
“Can I bring Toni?”
My father says, “You can, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t.” He wants a fresh start, he says. But there are ways of reading this: he has lost everything, and for a fresh start she must be willing to lose everything too. My mother tells herself Toni will be with a loving father, and as much as this is hurts, it is for the best. For everyone. This is not quite true. Her husband wants his wife back, and her daughter wants her mother back. It is not best for them. It is not for the best for my mother, either: she wants her daughter with her.
In 1965 along came Neil. It’s telling that Neil’s father was a policeman, a much admired man about the town, a stalwart of the cricket club; handsome too, whom many fancied. His public persona was jolly, but at home he showed a different side. It’s no wonder that Neil, who only heard the details of ‘the accident’ when he was 12, grew up confused by his father’s rejection of him and trying to live up to his mother’s exacting standards, thus convinced that he was a failure, the replacement son that neither wanted.
They move house to a plot with enough land to allow his father to keep ducks! His poor mother does most of the chores of looking after them, now being friendless in a new location.
…the housekeeping money doesn’t stretch beyond essentials. All she can afford to buy hi for his birthday [44th] is a pair of gardening gloves. He is displeased, and the day is spent in silence.
Two months later, it is my mother’s birthday, and my father gives her a pair of gardening gloves in return. This pleases him.
The teenaged author was quiet and timid at home, but disruptive and loud at school. And to hear it from his teachers at parents’ evening for his father was ‘the worst thing they could have said.’ However, Neil’s reputation got him into a punk band as lead singer. But what sparked an interest in reading and later writing in him?
It would be wrong to say there were no books in our house, but these were mostly biographies of sportsmen and large illustrated books about ducks. There were no novels at all…
It would be Mr Stewart, a young English teacher who gives him a copy of Crime and Punishment that lights the fuse.
But life at home gets more tense, as Neil’s father starts an affair with his mother’s married best friend from where they used to live, Anne. Neil’s relationship with his father deteriorates further, he discovers an entry in his father’s diary, ‘I hate my son.’ This makes him realise his father is an unhappy man. Eventually his parents split, and his father marries Anne.
O’Levels and CSEs come and go, fails all. He ponders why no-one ever told him that good marks are a means to an end, he would have tried harder. He sees this as a class thing. No conversations about going to university for him. The author moves to London with his girlfriend finding a run-down flat in South Kensington.
There is a small bookshop on Gloucester Road. I browse often, buy seldom. There is a small book, discounted, … by Jean-Paul Sartre.
I knew that bookshop well! When I was at university I walked past it every day. I went into Karnac Books frequently too and bought as often as I could, but from their few shelves of imported SF&F. I didn’t venture into the back of the shop though where they specialised in psychology and psychiatry texts. They are still going, in a new location.
Although the book follows the author’s life chronologically, he interrupts his own story with musings on psychology in particular, the work of Winnicott, Fairburn and especially Lacan, help give him understanding and comfort. As he grows old
The author heads for New York with a friend who is working there for the summer, he stays for two years doing a variety of jobs. Returning home he meets Bridget, who will become his wife and mother to their twins. However, depression makes and the solitary nature of the writer’s life make things difficult for him. When his father dies, he gets dangerously low writing the eulogy. Talking to Anne afterwards pulls him back from the brink.
Griffiths is unflinchingly honest throughout. His writing is thoughtful, not flowery, and surprisingly non-judgemental of his parents. Despite moments where you are truly scared for him, there is humour there too. What really comes through is his search for understanding. Touchingly, the author dedicates his memoir to Dorothy and Michael, but also Toni – his older half-sister, with whom his mother made contact again thankfully.
This was a very different memoir to Geoff Dyer’s Homework, which I read earlier this year. Born just a few years earlier than Griffiths, Dyer’s book only takes him up to going up to Oxford, but is full of childhood touchstones from the 1960s and 1970s which Griffiths doesn’t mention, such is his focus on his parents. Both books were, however, a pleasure to read.
Neil Griffiths, The Wrong Son – Weatherglass Books paperback original, 222 pages.
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