Family Romance

(Paperback, Main)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

I grew up with a sense that there was another, fuller, darker narrative looming behind the various shorter stories my mother told so well and so funnily.

Family Romance is a beautifully written memoir in which John Lanchester pieces together his parents' history, their extraordinary secrets and the shape of their shared life.

From his grandparents' beginnings in rural Ireland and colonial Rhodesia, Lanchester navigates through his family's lives: his father Bill's devastating wartime separation from his parents; his mother Julia's tragic first love, her decision to become a nun and her adoption of a new identity. Lanchester illuminates their characters and explores their motives with moving insight.

Family Romance is a book about reticence, and also about its costs. It is a story about love and Ireland, and fearing the strength of your own feelings; about family ties, and the flight from family, and the deep human need to keep secrets.

Reviews

"While Lanchester's parentage and transient childhood in the 'hybrid, postcolonial-to-capitalist bubble' are far from ordinary, his insight into the nature of families, their secrets and their sacrifices strike universal chords in this lovingly told account of how one storyteller came to be." - "Publisher's Weekly" "From the Hardcover edition."

Author Bio

John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He was brought up in Asia and educated in England. He is a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and is on the editorial board of the London Review of Books. His novels, The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phillips and Fragrant Harbour have won several prizes and been translated into more than twenty languages. His memoir, Family Romance, was published in 2007 to great acclaim. He is married and lives in London.