Alan Cumming :: A Memoir

Rarely have I come across a book, especially a biography, that was so page turningly gripping, when I do, it stays with me after I turn the final page, there is a sense of wishing for it to continue and an astounding amount of wonderment.  This book is firmly in my top five of those books.

This is not the run of the mill celebrity life biography, the rage to riches, poverty to prosperity, violence to vindication, with extreme luck and persistence.  The book comfortably switches between three areas, “Then” is the period in Alan’s history that highlights a personal decision or illustrates a cause, “2010” the filming of his episode of “Who Do You Thin You Are?” and the “Now” the time of writing in 2012.

We all have those triggers in life, a smell, a sound, a place, that take us straight back to a memory either warm or cold.  For Alan who describes the fear and violence of his childhood as something locked away in the box in the attic of his brain, an unexpected phone call from his estranged father caused the hinges on that box to collapse and a life time of suppression had to find somewhere to go.

Walking alongside him as he discovers the history of his maternal grandfather Tommy Darling, while keeping what was bubbling and boiling in his private life, you wonder how this cheeky charming bouncy Scot can keep the smile on his face and in his eyes.

I don’t want to go into the contents of the book as it would spoil it for other readers, but this agonising memoir, part mystery, part tragedy, part history, is such a strong moving read I cannot recommend highly enough to those who like this genre.