|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
My Ear At His Heart
Most first-person family stories sideline or silence the creative impulse that produced them. This one, remarkably, does the opposite, braiding life and art with candour and compassion. But can honesty in memoir-writing ever go too far? And can a literary version of someone else's hopes and dreams ever do justice to the subject's full reality? — The Independent |
A touching but
tough-minded memoir by one writer who became famous and fulfilled, about
another writer who did not. The twist—and what a ferocious emotional
grip it creates—is that the failed author was Hanif Kureishi's father.
Subtitled "reading my father", My Ear At His Heart revisits
the suburban childhood and bohemian youth that Kureishi has filtered,
fictionally, through previous works such as The Buddha of Suburbia.
His Bombay-born father, a
thwarted novelist who worked at the Pakistani Embassy in London, now
moves from the margins of invention to the centre of remembrance.
Kureishi recounts his father's long, onerous journey as a migrant, as a
parent, and as a would-be writer, in parallel with his own— much more
richly rewarded—raids on the cultural institutions of his time.