My Family: The Memoir
‘One of the funniest books I have ever read’ HADLEY FREEMAN
‘A masterpiece’ SATHNAM SANGHERA
‘The read of the summer’ THE SUNDAY TIMES
‘Brilliant … funny and moving’ ADAM KAY
A searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir in which David Baddiel exposes his mother’s idiosyncratic sex life, and his father’s dementia, to the same affectionate scrutiny.
On the surface, David Baddiel’s childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. David’s detailing of the affair – including a hilarious focus on how his mother turned their household over to golf memorabilia, and an eye-popping cache of her erotic writings – leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong.
Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother’s affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.
My Family: The Memoir is David Baddiel’s candid examination of his childhood, family and memory offering a twisted love letter to his parents.
‘I lost count of how many times I gasped’ CAITLIN MORAN
‘Infernally funny’ HOWARD JACOBSON
‘A triumph, a treat, a love letter to unconventional family members!’ NINA STIBBE
‘Baddiel has done his parents proud’GUARDIAN
‘Had me howling’ PANDORA SYKES
”'Baddiel writes with a comic’s fluency and timing … The tale of his mother’s affair is told without judgment, and with genuine empathy, while gleefully dancing around the edges of decency … In giving us the full, unvarnished picture, Baddiel has done his parents proud” - Guardian
'Devastating and gaspingly funny, often in the same sentence … David Baddiel is so good at everything he does, he's at risk of becoming a national treasure' Hadley Freeman, author of House of Glass -
”'My Family is as dark as it is funny, and it is very very dark and very very funny. Baddiel has made true art out of experience, I don't know how he does it. A masterpiece” - Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireworld
'A must-read, must-buy. Laugh out loud funny - and moving. The read of the summer' The Sunday Times -
'Candid, playful … an entertaining, bawdy memoir' Independent -
”'This book is WAY WAY WAY TOO MUCH in all the best ways. I lost count of how many times I gasped” - Caitlin Moran, author of What About Men?
”'Brilliant. As funny and moving as you’d imagine - actually, more so” - Adam Kay, author of Undoctored
'Had me howling' Pandora Sykes, author of How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? -
'By all that's holy this book should not have seen the light of day. By all that's unholy we rejoice it has. Infernally funny' Howard Jacobson, author of What Will Survive of Us -
”'A triumph, a treat, a love letter to unconventional family members!” - Nina Stibbe, author of Went to London, Took the Dog
”'This word, 'amazing', pretty much sums up Baddiel’s memoir; likewise 'jaw-dropping'…wincingly funny, but always pointedly fond” - iPaper