My Family: The Memoir

A searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir in which David Baddiel exposes his mothers idiosyncratic sex life, and his fathers dementia, to the same affectionate scrutiny.

On the surface, David Baddiels 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. Davids 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 familys past, his fathers memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mothers 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 Baddiels candid examination of his childhood, family and memory offering a twisted love letter to his parents.