This party’s got to stop
Rupert Thomson
I went to a very enjoyable reading and discussion on memoir writing this week, hosted by Faber in the subterranean cool of The Social bar in Bloomsbury. Julie Myerson read from her dystopian and disturbing new novel Then, and Simon Armitage read from his collection Seeing Stars.
Rupert Thomson, author of eight novels or so, read from his funny and heartbreaking memoir, and revealed the spur that made him tell his own story after telling so many imaginary people’s.
Thomson’s mother died suddenly when he was a young child. When he was in his early twenties, his father died, and the three brothers spent a few very strange months living back at their childhood house. The atmosphere became increasingly intense and dysfunctional amid quite a lot of drink and other stuff, culminating in a massive bonfire (cue the arrival of the policeman who delivered the line Thomson takes as his title).
The other outcome was a damaging falling out between Thomson and his younger brother and wife, which lasted for 20 years. This memoir is by way of a peace offering to his brother – although it caused turmoil amongst family members when he showed it to them. As Julie Myerson discovered when she wrote her own family memoir, The Lost Child, the repercussions of opening your private world to the public can be exceedingly painful.
This Party’s Got to Stop is exhilarating but also very moving, unafraid to ask the scary question that arises after years of family feuding, ‘What the hell happened there?’
Best for: healing family rifts
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