Leaving Home

I rarely buy hardbacks. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to buy all the other books I want to read. But I made an exception for this and I’m glad I did. When it comes out in paperback, I can’t imagine that black-and-white will do the wealth of illustrations within the pages any favours at all. Illustrations so richly evocative of both a time and place and a state - states? - of mind.

I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s a memoir of an unhappy childhood and confused adulthood, of depression and illness and confusion. It’s also an account of writing and finding a way through the confusion that comes in the wake of such an upbringing. And though his descriptions of his early life and later relationships with his parents are often painful to read, I don’t find anything malicious in them. No settling of old scores. No desire to inflict one final winning bout of pain. 

It’s simply – simply? – Mark Haddon’s memories of growing up in a house without books and little in the way of affection, in a time – he was born in 1962 – when a lot of parents just didn’t do that sort of thing. I think a lot of readers, born around then, will find an awful lot to identify with, even if it’s only his vivid evocation of a time. 

Definitely a book to be read more than once.