Not My Father's Son: A Memoir: A Family Memoir - Hardcover

Alan Cumming

4.04

44,367 ratings by Goodreads

9781782115441: Not My Father's Son: A Memoir: A Family Memoir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1782115447 ISBN 13: 9781782115441

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd., 2014

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A beloved star of stage, television, and film, Alan Cumming is a successful artist whose diversity and fearlessness is unparalleled. But his success masks a painful childhood growing up under the heavy rule of an emotionally and physically abusive father; a relationship that tormented him long into adulthood.

When BBC television producers approached him to appear on the popular celebrity genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? in 2010, Alan enthusiastically agreed. He hoped the show would solve a family mystery involving his grandfather, a celebrated WWII hero who remained in Singapore after the war and died a few years later in a mysterious accident. But as the truth of his family ancestors revealed itself, Alan learned far more than he could have imagined about his past, and his own father.

With humour, wit, and incredible insight, Alan seamlessly moves back and forth in time, integrating stories from his childhood in Scotland , his subsequent attempts to uncover the truth about his grandfather's death in Malaya and the perverse legacy of his father. At times suspenseful, deeply moving, and wickedly funny, Not My Father's Son will make readers laugh even as it breaks their hearts.

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Review:

Do you know the old line "I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me"? Alan Cumming's moving memoir Not My Father's Son is all that and more. This is a beautiful book-sad, funny, haunting, surprising, suspenseful, gut-wrenching, endearing. It will linger inside of you long after you turn the final page (HARLAN COBEN author of New York Times bestsellers MISSING YOU and SIX YEARS)

One of the most fun people in show business (Time)

Equal parts memoir, whodunnit and manual for living, Not My Father's Son is a beautifully written, honest look at the forces of blood and bone that make us what we are, and how we make ourselves. I was completely sucked in (NEIL GAIMAN) --Harlan Coben

Book Description:

In his unique and engaging voice, the acclaimed actor of stage and screen shares the emotional story of his complicated relationship with his father and the deeply buried family secrets that shaped his life and career.

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