O Brother

Reviews / Votes

Vivid, visceral, brilliantly funny in places, dispensing sharp punches to the gut in others . . . [O Brother] made me sob more than once, and I suspect it will do the same to you * * Guardian * * Riotous and yet bracingly moving . . . Often exuberant, laugh-out-loud funny, touching, sad and rueful * * Observer * * Heartbreaking, and told with tenderness and honesty . . . The writing is first rate, without announcing how good it is. I can't recommend it strongly enough * * Spectator * * An honest epitaph for a troubled soul, tender and sentimental, but shot through with anger and regret for the things left unsaid * * The Times * * Oh my God, this book! O Brother feels like war-level reportage from the nuclear-blast that suicide inflicts on a family. [. . . ] 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 Tender, raw and beautiful . . . Niven is a tremendous storyteller. It is a memoir, it is a remembrance, and it is a guttural cry for us all to take those we love and hold them closer, to love them harder - to fight for them, in a society that gives up on men like Gary all too easily * * iPaper * * As moving, scalding, funny and harrowing as any memoir I've ever read -- IAN RANKIN 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 A brutal and brilliant sibling memoir. It's with both humour and pathos that [John Niven] recalls his and Gary's early life growing up in Irvine, Ayrshire, their diverging adult trajectories * * Guardian * *