This Party's Got to Stop, By Rupert Thomson
From the first page of this memoir, as a young boy hears the voice of his soon-to-die mother, we enter that zone of eerie clarity allied to soul-deep doubt that all readers of Thomson's fiction will know.
More than two decades later, after his father's death, Thomson re-joined his brothers for a weird summer of grief, rivalry and twisted love - "a last wild farewell" - in the family house in Eastbourne.
Off the rails, out of order, the siblings act with a fairy-tale logic that teeters on the edge of mania. Thomson seeks to fit his past together and to grasp how loss has smashed it: "Life was as flimsy as the model planes I used to buy, all balsa wood and rubber bands."
This outstanding novelist has managed to craft an autobiography that equals his fiction in its sinister glamour.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies