Reading this memoir is like sitting on the floor in a room with a friend who spreads over the carpet their dog-eared, yellowing, predigital photo albums and spills out a box-file marked 'The Past.' It’s an immersive experience ... An uplifting book, funny and sad and hopeful.
Unusual and gripping ... In this book, chronology and detail aren’t necessary. It’s written sometimes in past tense, sometimes in present tense ... We follow the jumbled order of his mind, and it all makes perfect sense.
A tortured, philosophical reflection ... Often difficult to read ... Though it may seem taboo-busting to acknowledge disgust for your parents and relief at their death...it is also done with a cold detachment and lack of empathy, especially for Haddon’s mother, that contrasts starkly with the capacious emotional space he finds in great literature ... Often feels like ongoing therapeutic analysis, which may be good for the author, but might leave the reader asking, as with so much memoir, what’s in it for them.
A unique nonlinear, richly illustrated memoir ... Heartbreaking, hilarious, and richly hopeful, especially for other oddball creatives ... It’s a book I expect to return to for quiet triumphs to buoy my creative spirit through all sorts of dark times.
A funny, tender, profoundly original mystery ... The story is full of pain, but not defeat ... An exquisitely written collage of fragments from the past ... The subject matter is often grim, but there’s a saving grace in the tone and outcomes ... A beautiful book, a pleasure to handle and read.
Haddon...writes with uncanny humor and endearing candor as he leapfrogs from childhood incidents to more recent struggles and discoveries ... As he reflects on his hard-tested loyalty to his parents and his love for his sister, wife, and children, Haddon is pithily hilarious, deeply insightful, and very moving.
Absorbing, melancholy ... Although Haddon reflects on positive aspects of his life—his teaching, writing, happy marriage, fatherhood, and deeply satisfying volunteer work with the Samaritans—darkness and sadness pervade his forthright memoir. Candid, disquieting memories.
