Dadland

Reviews

A beautifully written, funny and tender ode to an adventurous, occasionally frustrating, man who lived life at full tilt It's now commonplace to say that sad memoirs are ultimately redemptive, but Dadland is the real McCoy. It is a rich and stunning achievement, a feat of imagination that sews together many parallel true stories. Above all, it is a labour of shining daughterly love I was so absorbed and moved by Dadland I haven't been able to read anything else. It is beautifully written -- deft and funny and so tender -- but I have also come away knowing more about history, more about dementia, more about men, more about daughters, more about love, family, sheds, diaries, an inquisitive mind and peeing in plastic bottles. I loved it. I really did. Powerful memoir... The clouding of Tom's mind never eclipsed his charm ... Dadland is no tragedy, threaded as it is with forgiveness, love and a fine, fierce comic glitter Keggie turns spy on her father. She is on a “ghost hunt”… What she uncovers is an extraordinary gift for any memoirist… fascinating "As Dad was losing his past... I was trying to retrieve it," Keggie writes... With the publication of this original, moving book, she has succeeded Compelling and moving from start to finish... Carew’s funny, fascinating and unflinching tribute to her father is a portrait of a complex man: not just a war hero but a flawed husband; not just a Jedburgh but her incorrigible and much-missed dad a thrilling, bloody, educative history of Churchill's Special Operations Executive... combined ingeniously with a tender, moving, funny portrait of the author’s father A fascinating mix of military history and family memoir studded with photographs… It’s one woman’s attempt to put her father’s role in history on the page, at the same time as his own recollections of it diminish A poignant, inspiring and often comic account of family life and the man known as the T E Lawrence of Burma ... Ripping real-life yarns of double agents, secret messages, illicit assassinations and cyanide pills... the heroics and humour persist to the end Expand reviews