O Brother

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O Brother

By: John Niven

Narrated by: John Niven

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John Niven’s little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. In 2010, after years of chaotic struggle against the world, he took his own life at the age of 42. Hoping for the best while often witnessing the worst, John, his younger sister Linda and their mother, Jeanette, saw the darkest fears they had for Gary played out in drug deals, prison and bankruptcy. While his life spiralled downward and the love the Nivens’ shared was tested to its limit, John drifted into his own trouble in the music industry, a world where excess was often a marker of success. Tracking the lives of two brothers in changing times – from illicit cans of lager in 70s sitting rooms to ecstasy in 90s raves – O Brother is a tender, affecting and often uproariously funny story. It is about the bonds of family and how we try to keep the finest of those we lose alive. It is about black sheep and what it takes to break the ties that bind. Fundamentally it is about how families survive suicide, ‘that last cry, from the saddest outpost.’

John NivenJohn NivenCanongate Books

Grief & Loss

Parenting & Families

Personal Development

Funny

Witty

Heartfelt

Inspiring

Emotionally Gripping

Thought-Provoking

Grief & Loss Parenting & Families Personal Development Funny Witty Heartfelt Inspiring Emotionally Gripping Thought-Provoking

Critic reviews

Oh my God, this book! O Brother feels like war-level reportage from the nuclear-blast that suicide inflicts on a family. [. . . ] The honesty is unflinching, the humour night-black, and yet the sheer energy and power of the writing means you can, as I did, inhale it in just two sittings [. . . ]. A book whose genuine importance is only equaled by its sheer, visceral, compulsive readability (CAITLIN MORAN)

Absurdly well-written, painfully funny and painfully painful (ADAM KAY)

O Brother is an extraordinary memoir; as devastating as it is colourful, forensic in its examination of family dynamics and oh so beautifully written. I earmarked so many pages that my copy doubled in width. Do not read the final chapter without a box of tissues (JOJO MOYES)

Heartbreaking and heartwarming (WILL YOUNG)

This is a work of scalding honesty and candour which explores the devastating impact of suicide on a family . . . An act of remembrance and a testimony to his brother [. . .]. Transcendent power and anguish, shot through with brilliant humour and insight. I couldn't put it down (SALI HUGHES)

Praise for John Niven: 'Niven can provoke tears of sorrow as well as laughter'

John Niven is our Hunter S. Thompson (ADAM KAY)

A writer who could wring laughs out of pretty much anything

There's nothing faster, sadder or funnier than John Niven on men (CAITLIN MORAN)

Probably the most exciting British writer working today (DANNY WALLACE)

Most relevant

As his granny always called him as a child, John Niven’s younger brother Gary was a ‘bad wee stick’, whilst John was the good boy. As he grew up careering wildly through chronic addiction, dealing, stealing, broken relationships and destructive violence , Gary seemed to prove his granny right. But however calamitous Gary’s life was, John saw his brother’s strengths and grieved for his fulfilled potential. This book charts the boys’ childhoods, and the ten years of the family’s maelstrom of grief, loss, fury and guilt following Gary’s suicide whilst waiting for a doctor in A&E.

It’s honest and blood-raw made all the more powerful by hearing the Scots vernacular of John’s childhood in the speech he gives to Gary. The immensely moving final section where John speaks as Gary describing his last few days of life is heart-breakingly real.

John is analytical too about himself and what he sees as his failings of Gary as he himself roars through his younger years, ‘coked up’ working in the music business. Unsurprisingly John’s marriage didn’t survive and the section where he looks back on the day he walked out on his wife and young son, and describes how it continues to haunt and shame him, is intensely self-aware.

John tortures himself trying to understand what turned Gary into that deeply damaged adult. Did the beatings he received from his father for the many destructive acts he committed as a child predispose him to crippling adult depression? Very likely. Did having a conforming older brother accentuate his low self esteem? Probably. Although nothing can fully explain the complexities of this tragic bad wee stick, John’s portrayal of the effect of Gary on himself and his family is brutally honest. When Gary’s sister found out that her brother had stolen their mother’s cash nest egg squirrelled away for her old age, through her tears of impotent rage she cried ‘I’m GLAD he’s dead!’ What comes through here and throughout O Brother is the pain Gary suffered and inflicted, and the love the family had for the wee man they couldn’t save from himself.

An excellent narrative performance from the author with the Scots greatly enhancing the remarkable I overall immediacy.