Not My Father’s Son: A Book Review

What’s the difference between a memoir and a biography?

I really have no idea.

I don’t read all that many of either category, but every time I do I realize that I probably should read more of them.  They’re so interesting.

It’s a look into another human’s psyche – their view of the world and of themselves and the stuff that went down in their own lives.

I just finished actor Alan Cumming’s memoir Not My Father’s Son.

I only know Cummings from Spy Kids, but he’s been in lots of other films. Obviously all more adult and edgier than Spy Kids, I’m sure.  I literally saw this on the shelf at the library and thought it looked interesting.  The end.

And it was.  Interesting, that is.

Goodness – this guy’s childhood was rotten.  His dad was legitimately suffering from undiagnosed mental illness and the abuse that Alan and his brother and his mother suffered at this man’s hands was shocking and painful to read.

This is one of the books where the ideas about the damaging effects of silence really struck me.  This family suffered a lifetime of abuse and their communal silence perpetuated the entire enduring pain and suffering.

Like I mentioned, it’s not my normal read – and I think that’s good for me.

But – just like with so many movies – I hesitate to actually recommend this memoir wholeheartedly as it is raw and peppered with language.  But, honestly, I don’t think the language is excessive and generally – it’s pretty much right on target for the appropriate emotion given the specific circumstance.

I think it’s really an honest telling and the journey Cummings takes the reader on is both compelling and heartbreaking.  His words give clear insight into the inner workings of a mind recognizing and naming former grievances and repressed evil done against him as a child and as an adult.  You just don’t want to believe that this kind of anger and maliciousness exists in the form of a man two sons called father.  It’s unnerving.

Midway through the book, Cummings and his brother are reliving their childhood terrors and traumatic experiences that they had both learned to deny and to downplay in order to make their lives more acceptable to the people living in close proximity to their family growing up.

Cummings speaks about how important it was to he and his brother that their memories were validated – that they were known and seen to be real and true.

It is a startling thing, the need to feel utterly believed.  Memories that were so tender and tentative could not be entrusted to anyone who might possibly doubt them …  Tom and I were only just beginning to believe and fully understand the scope of what we’d been through, so it was important to us to hear that we were accepted and understood.

And isn’t that what we all want when we speak up and share our stories and find our voice?

To be believed?

To be accepted and understood?

(I called my friend last week and literally said almost the exact same thing.  I said, “I want to tell you a story and I only want to share it because I need someone else to hear it and at the end I guess I just want you to say that I’m not crazy and to know that the story happened.”)

Not My Father’s Son was a hard story to read.  I imagine it was a perfectly difficult story to write and a more impossibly unpleasant one to live.

I’d say that the author and I wouldn’t land on the same page on some topics and our world views are kind of oppositional to one another, but there are certain aspects that are simply universal in all of our stories.

That need to be understood.

That desire to be vulnerable in the presence of someone trustworthy.

The recognition that children (and humans, in general) should not be treated with such disdain and contempt.

The truth that mental illness often goes undiagnosed and appears as anger and out-of-control control issues and that silence about a family’s dark places only keeps the entire family in the dark, draws out the suffering and hides the perpetrator.