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.
'An extraordinary, hilarious book' OBSERVER
‘I lost count of how many times I gasped’ CAITLIN MORAN
'Outrageously funny…profoundly thoughtful' THE SUNDAY TIMES
'Explosively funny, brilliantly written' DAVID WALLIAMS
'Infernally funny' HOWARD JACOBSON
‘A triumph’ NINA STIBBE
'Baddiel has done his parents proud’GUARDIAN
'Had me howling' PANDORA SYKES