Fame, food, music, sex and sport: Best 10 memoirs to read this summer

The Herald Scotland

5 days ago

Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, Frances Wilson, Bloomsbury, £25
Muriel Spark, that most mercurial of Scottish writers never made it easy for her biographers (she had her own official biography delayed by seven years and then dismissed the result as a 'hatchet job'). At the same time, though, her story is not short of incident. An unhappy marriage to a man prone to violent outbursts (it was when he tried to shoot her that she fled with their son), the abandonment of said son, a breakdown, a religious conversion; she made sure there was plenty of material. Wilson makes the most of it.
British actor and comedian Peter Sellers (Image: free) The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Roger Lewis, Riverrun, £30
After the huge success of Roger Lewis's incredibly moreish Erotic Vagrancy, his joint memoir of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, it's no surprise that his 2004 memoir of Peter Sellers should be spruced up and put once more out into the world.
If I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Erotic Vagrancy that's mostly because I've never really warmed to Sellers the performer or the man (the latter would be hard, to be fair, given the way he treated his wives and, well, pretty much everyone else). But Lewis gives both the career and the life his full attention here. And he is a sharp, often waspish guide: 'Because she was unobtainable, [Sophia] Loren stayed Seller's ideal woman,' he writes at one point. 'Even from beyond the grave, he was faithful to her memory and inspiration. Interviewed through a ouija board by a psychic named Micki Dahne, he said, 'Sophia was my ultimate woman.''
And it's probably worth it alone for the addition of Lewis's droll account of the filming of the big screen version of this book.
Naked Portrait: A Memoir of My Father Lucian Freud (Image: Picador)
Naked Portrait: A Memoir of My Father Lucian Freud, Rosie Boyt, Picador, £12.99
And talking of sacred monsters … Novelist Rosie Boyt's memoir of her dad and one of England's greatest painters of the postwar 20th century (he's jostling for the title with Bacon, I reckon) is a revealing take on the artist and the man. The word 'shocking' was used again and again in reviews of the book. Boyt, now 66, looks back on their relationship and her own life as a young woman in 1980s London. As you would expect she has the fiction writer's eye for detail.
The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius, Patchen Barss, Atlantic, £12.99, August 28
To get a measure of Patchen Barss's biography of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose (now coming out in paperback) you just need to read the prologue which begins with an account of Penrose heating up a cup of coffee in the microwave in 2008 and then proceeds to give us a brief history of the 13.7 billion years since the birth of the universe. This account of one of the greatest cosmologists of the 20th century takes on both the science and the man.
Del Amitiri (Image: free) The Tremolo Diaries, New Modern, £22, out August 28
This summer is a good one for music memoirs from ageing pop stars. As well as The Absence, Budgie's account of his life in Siouxsie and the Banshees there's also Kevin Rowland's self-flagellating memoir about his time in Dexys Midnight Runners (Bless Me Father, Ebury Spotlight, £25). But if you can wait until the end of August it's worth considering The Tremolo Diaries. At first glance it might not seem promising - a tour diary of Justin Currie's band Del Amitri as they schlep around America alongside Semisonic and Barenaked Ladies, and then around the UK and Europe in support of Simple Minds (who come out of this account very well, it has to be said).
But there's much more to this than an ageing musician's grumbling about bad hotels and bad food. Because in these pages Currie is coming to terms with his own Parkinson's diagnosis - what he calls the Ghastly Affliction; his tremor, meanwhile, is named Gavin - while also dealing with the fact that the love of his life is now in a care home.
And yet for all the pain and fear and heartache in these pages, it's also full of life and joy and copious swearing. I laughed out loud more than once. Currie is realistic about his condition but not maudlin about it and he has retained his very Scottish ability to be entertainingly angry at things that annoy him.
The result is a thrill of a book and a great marker for new music publisher New Modern. Oh, and if BBC Scotland ever wants to make a programme that people might actually want to watch, just send Justin and a camera crew around the art galleries of Europe. His art criticism here is by turns caustic and funny. He has all the potential to be TV's new Sister Wendy.
Read more
Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef, Slutty Cheff, Bloomsbury, £16.99
Sex and food. Food and sex. This pseudonymous account of life in London restaurants is greedy for both. I could have done with less sex myself, but maybe that's because I'm an ageing parent these days. Ah, but the food. Our author writes about it with such glee and detail you are salivating as you read. And she brings a real energy to writing about life in kitchens (you can tell Anthony Bourdain is one of her heroes). She's also very good at nailing the misogyny, misery and pleasure of a chef's life.
Namaste Motherf*ckers, Cally Beaton, Headline, £22, July 31
Language Timothy. Sorry. Language, Cally. Comedian and podcaster Cally Beaton's new book is a mash-up of memoir and manifesto aimed at offering a map to midlife female reinvention. As someone who went from being a studio exec to appearing on Live at the Apollo, she has some experience to share on the matter. Can you be funny about failure? Turns out you can. And the menopause and misogyny and the Hoffman Process (for those of you desperate to Google something).
Mike Tyson (Image: Getty Images)
Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson, Mark Kriegal, Ebury Spotlight, £25
Granted, it's perfectly possible that the idea of spending a few hundred pages in the company of the heavyweight boxer and, lest we forget, convicted rapist, Mike Tyson may not be to your taste. Tyson's story is a brutal one, in terms of what was inflicted on him and what he inflicted on others (and sometimes himself). And yet he is still here and he's now a cannabis mogul. Kriegal's book tackles it all.
How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir, Molly Jong-Fast, Picador, £16.99
Vanity Fair writer Molly Jong-Fast looks back on her turbulent, sometimes chaotic, relationship with her mother, Erica Jong, novelist, feminist and author of the notorious Fear of Flying, from childhood to Jong's descent into dementia. Expect anger, love and grief.
Nouvelle Femmes, Ericka Knudson, Chronicle, £26
Film historian Ericka Knudson's new book has the rather clunky subtitle 'Modern Women of the French New Wave and Their Enduring Contribution to Cinema'. But that can't be said of its subjects, actresses Anna Karina, Jeanne Moreau, Jean Seberg, Brigitte Bardot and filmmaker Agnes Varda. Just those names conjure up images of the Left Bank, coffee and croissants, and striped sailor shirts. Actually, you don't have to imagine them. This book enhances Knudson's text with photographs, film posters and neat design.