gonville
in powerful and spirited prose, Peter Birkenhead recounts a childhood spent trying to make sense of his father, a terrifying, charismatic presence who brutalized his family physically and emotionally at the same time that he enchanted them with his passion and whimsy. An avid gun collector yet an anti-war activist, a popular economics professor and a wife-swapping nudist, a leftist and a lifelong fan of the british empire who would occasionally don an authentic pith helmet and imitate michael caine's performance as the heroic lieutenant gonville bromhead in the bloody war film zulu, he was a man who could knock his young son down the stairs one day and the next cry about putting the family's aged dog to sleep. such is the contradictory figure at the center of this astonishingly candid and shocking memoir.

combining the terror and wit of running with scissors, the poignancy and sense of place of the tender bar, with the sparkling prose of oh the glory of it all, gonville is light on its feet even as it deals in the darkest of family tales. a harrowing and often humorous story of a son coming to terms with his alternately charming, cruel, generous, and violent father.

hardcover, 256 pages.