Having already lost his mother and only brother, Will Boast is left alone in the world at the age of 24 when his father dies of alcoholism. After the funeral, he discovers a divorce document in his father’s desk drawer, dated from before he and his brother were born. The red stamp on each page, with the symbol of the crown and the words “Southampton County Court”, brings the realisation that there may be a whole past dimension to his father’s life of which he was previously unaware. Boast was born in England and grew up in Ireland and the US, where his parents settled when he was a child. He decides to travel back to England, to set about finding the two sons from his father’s first marriage: his only surviving family. An episodic structure lends this memoir a meandering quality as the author attempts to understand his father and reconcile the memory of the man he remembers with new information gleaned along the way. However, Boast makes up for any narrative lags with the sheer quality of his prose.
