In preparing myself to work with my mom's memoirs, I decided to shift my reading list, away from the literary fiction I usually favour, to include more literary non-fiction. One of the titles I have recently finished reading is Family Romance: A Love Story, by John Lanchester.
It is slow-moving family history, and also a true-life detective story. The book is aptly sub-titled "A love story," because the author treats his subject matter, his parents and the at times problematic decisions they made, with humility, respect, and, yes, love. Mommy Dearest this is not!
My favorite part of the book would have to be the "reveal" of the pivotal choice his mother makes before the author is born, one that has reverberations throughout her life and that of her only child. I won't give away the story here, but it is worth reading for the gradual build to this point in the book, and the delicacy with which it is handled.
If I had a complaint about the book (difficult, because the writing so fine and the subject matter interesting) it would be that it is very slow moving at times. Deliberate, layered and, and somehow too slow at times. Still, I was engaged throughout.
Weird connections.
I knew nothing about the author or his history when I picked this book up, and so I was amazed to read about his mother's work in Kodaikanal, where my mother went to school for a brief but important period. It was in Kodai, in 1937, that my mother completed grade 1, and had her first experience of a sympathetic adult who seemed to believe her that all was not well in my mother's relationship with her own mother
There was no overlap, other than that of place. (Lanchester's mother was there in the 50s, and my mother would not have been in a Catholic school there). Nonetheless, I found myself gobbling up this part of Lanchester's book, hoping for other connections.
In any case, I took this rare connection of a sign that I was doing the right thing by my mother of supplementing my reading with other creative non-fiction.
Born in India under British rule, Barbara became a celebrated romance novelist. She discovered her life’s purpose in her final years: to tell the story of the Indian servants who saved her life. 
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