‘Remarkable ... among the most heartbreaking accounts of family life I have ever read ... This is an astonishing and wonderfully well-written biography'

Justin Cartwright, Independent on Sunday

‘This is White's best book ... If his autobiographical novels were a blueprint of his memory, this book is its to-scale model'

Independent

‘A vital and engrossing book ... His account of himself is clear, humorous, never coy. He knows that his "painful honesty" is the source of his humour. And we feel strongly, at the end of this remarkable book, that it is more than that: it is the source of everything, however artful and luscious, that he has ever written'

Alan Hollinghurst, Guardian