Dadland
A Journey into Uncharted Territory
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4.4 • 13 Ratings
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
Discover a daughter's journey into her father's past in this Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the 2016 Costa Biography Award.
Keggie Carew grew up under the spell of an unorthodox, enigmatic father. An undercover guerrilla agent during the Second World War, in peacetime he lived on his wits and dazzling charm. But these were not always enough to sustain a family.
As his memory began to fail, Keggie embarked on a quest to unravel his story once and for all. Dadland is that journey. It takes us into shadowy corners of history, a madcap English childhood, the poignant breakdown of a family, the corridors of dementia and beyond.
'OH THIS BOOK. Beautiful and fierce and brave. Memory and war and family and loss and, well, wow' Helen Macdonald, bestselling author of H is for Hawk
'A thrilling history of Churchill's Special Operations Executive... combined ingeniously with a tender, moving, funny portrait of the author's father' Nick Hornby, Observer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A woman revisits her faltering father's exploits in World War II, and a marriage that felt almost as violent as the war, in this energetic memoir. Carew's father, Tom, a British special operations officer, won medals for leading French partisans against the Germans and Burmese guerillas against the Japanese; he later became embroiled in Burmese nationalist politics, sympathizing with the anti-colonial cause against Britain's fraying imperial claims. Carew's vivid narrative takes readers briskly through the horrors and excitement of war, portraying Tom as a vigorous, charismatic soldier fully in his element. His postwar life is less dashing: spottily employed and debt-ridden, he struggled to provide his family with the trappings of gentility. His first wife, Jane, born into money, grew distraught at her downward mobility; she filled the house with her furious tirades and took out her rage on her live-in father-in-law by smashing his belongings, snipping his TV aerial, and throwing bricks through his bedroom window. (The author's stepmother, a controlling woman reminiscent of Darth Vader, comes off even worse than Jane.) Carew's evocative blend of biography and memoir maintains a warmly clear-eyed tone while taking the full measure of dysfunctional and disappointed lives. Even the scenes of Tom succumbing to Alzheimer's have a dotty charm. This is a scintillating portrait of Britain's Greatest Generation at war and uneasy peace. Photos.
