Not My Father’s Son: A Memoir
Written and Narrated By: Alan Cumming
Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
Ahhh, so much Alan Cumming, so little time
It looks like I'm just doing All Things Alan Cumming as of late. My mother, sister and I recently finished You Have to Get Bigger Dreams; this past week we did Macbeth the Novel for our audiobook club, and that in turn had me heading to Macbeth the play (the Alan Cumming One Man Show) to see how the two were different.
And while You Have to Get Bigger Dreams had me rolling my eyes about how incredibly self-absorbed Cumming is, Not My Father's Son and the two Macbeths have me pretty much enraptured to the point where the next audiobook on my list will soon be Dracula. Or the Dracula, at any rate, that has Cumming as part of the cast narrating.
Cuz he is one incredibly talented man. Not My Father's Son can oooooooonly be told by him, and it winds up being not quite 6 1/2 hours of listening bliss (I do so love the rich, thick, Scottish tones!).
It's part family mystery, part hellish childhood, part DNA quandary, part hellish early adulthood. It's a wonderful memoir! I especially enjoyed his learning the true history of Tommy Darling, his maternal grandfather who died under mysterious circumstances far from his home and family. In unraveling that mystery, WWII and what is now known as PTSD are discussed, and I felt like I'd learned about true heroes yet again (military history buff that I am!). Tommy Darling was, after all, but a very young man who wound up seeing much horror during the war and who went on to see much horror afterwards. And the way he died was tragic but understandable when all was said and done.
Mostly, however, Cumming's history with a brutally unstable father is kicked around and gone into, and there's the looming specter, the looming hope, that Alan is NOT the man's biological son. This is something he fears, something he longs for. And it's all told with great care, great pathos.
Also, Cumming as a writer is not to be outdone. This is one genuinely funny book as his imagination, his observations, are to die for. It's all wickedly ribald, wickedly humorous. There's a lot of pain and fear here, yes, very much so. But there's also a refreshing twist in imagery, in choice of words.
Highly recommended, tho' I must admit to rolling my eyes a few times when I thought Cumming was being a tad too much: It's all about meeeeeeeee-ish...!
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