Fiction Book Review: Did You Ever Have A Family
Bill Clegg’s first work of fiction is a rich and compelling piece which I had to read slowly. It’s not a huge book at only 293 pages and, having finished it, I only wish it had been longer.
The event at the heart of the book happens before it opens.
A devastating, accidental fire the night before a wedding takes the lives of
son and lover Luke, bride and daughter Lolly, and groom and son Will. Carrying
on, however reluctantly and in their different fashions, are those connected to
them. June has lost both her lover and her daughter, and Lydia has lost her
only son, Luke. Luke and Lydia were recently, and still somewhat shakily,
reconciled after many years’ bitter separation. June and daughter Lolly were
similarly finding ways to connect after a long estrangement. Groom Will, golden
boy of his family, does not really come alive to us in the novel, but exists
mostly as a missing presence. In the same way, June’s former husband Adam, who
also died in the accident, receives scant attention. Luckily we are so fixated
on how Lydia and June cope that these are minor details.
The two bereaved women – June and Lydia carry the story through in such an event-less fashion that it should seem like a snail’s pace but due to the complexity of feeling, the richness of text, the skill of construction, and the scattering of others whose lives are brought into play, the story never falters or drags. Different voices take up the story and relieve the morbidity such that you feel you are reading a family saga rather than what is effectively an epitaph. Each person’s point of view is truly authentic, including the bong-sucking teenager Silas who is spiralling down to who knows where. This book manages to be part thriller, part romance, part literary fiction, and wholly engaging.
The author is now a successful literary agent following a
period as a crack addict in New York, recorded in two memoirs. Did You Ever Have a Family was
long-listed for the 2015 Man Booker prize.
Jackie Howell | Collection Development Team Leader