Losing Mum and Pup : a memoir

Fast, precocious, and repressed, with moments of frosty, New England venom (yes!) padded and softened by a woozy, faintly greasy filial hero-worship (no!).

There have been many excellent books written about how to deal with death; Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed immediately come to mind. To this brief list I would add Losing Mum and Pup.

Christopher Buckley is known for his humorous, satirical novels. I've

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read Thank You for Smoking and Supreme Courtship and have enjoyed his humor and irreverence with both establishment and politically correct thought. His sense of humor comes through (example: quoting Oscar Wilde that to lose one parent is a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness) in this volume too, although this definitely is not a funny book. Rather it is the author's way of working through his grief at losing both his mother and father in the space of a little more than a year.

Anyone in the literate world will know who William F. Buckley, Jr. was and similarly, anyone who has followed the world of fashion and society in New York City in even a cursory manner will know about Pat Buckley, his beautiful and in many ways difficult wife. Christopher Buckley is their only child - a fact that, to me, implies both a privileged and difficult life. I would think it would have been easier to grow up in a family of many children and be able to spread parental attention (or lack thereof) around instead of being the only object of these two larger than life figures attention. However, one cannot decide the circumstances of one's birth and the author seems to have made the most of it and emerged from his journey through childhood with good humor and an immense affection for both his parents.

In a somewhat stream of consciousness style, Buckley takes the reader on a journey through his father's last year of life, starting with his deathbed scene with his mother, planning her memorial service at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, caring for his father during the last year of his life with multiple health emergencies, and ending with his father's funeral service at St. Patrick's cathedral in New York. Through this journey there are numerous asides - a sailing trip with Pup in the midst of a howling Nor'easter, Mum's penchant for spinning the most outrageous lies as cocktail patter, and memories of a stellar collection of family friends. Throughout the book, one comes to see that Buckley has a clear-eyed love of his parents - warts and all - and that he is a product of their love and somewhat unorthodox parenting skills.

For anyone dealing with elderly parents or coping with their deaths, I'd recommend this slender volume. It is a fitting tribute to two American originals and a demonstration of a son's devotion.

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William Buckley has fascinated me since the debates at the Democratic convention with Gore Vidal and his book, Nearer my God, was one of the first "Catholic" books Jim and I read; so I have wanted to read this book since I first read the reviews. I am sorry to read that Mrs. Buckley was such a pil

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and that William had such terrible health problems, but I was amazed at the love these two flawed people shared. If you like William Buckley, read this book; if you don't just skip it.

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Brilliant, funny, heart-wrenching. My parents were neither quite as odd nor as famous, but otherwise, Christopher Buckley's experience with their death was remarkably similar emotionally to mine. The mix of pain and humor, of finding oneself in ludicrous situations while trying to protect a parent

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from a painful reality or from their own impulses. I too am an only child who was 'careless enough' to lose both parents within a short time (6 weeks in my case).
Buckley's writing, rhythm, and humor make sparkle what could have been painful tales, the kind you want to nudge anyone nearby and say 'listen to this.' Part of sharing the experience with him is that we all know of so many of the people and events involved, so many of the books and quotes, and spiritual challenges. I knew almost nothing about Pat Buckley, but I was able to relate, especially having had a similarly imperious mother (who is gone or I wouldn't have dared say that in public).
One doesn't have to have agreed with William F. Buckley, Jr. to appreciate his wry brilliance or discount his flaws. Take it from a female, Jewish, liberal. It probably helps to have heard him speak, have read his words, or watched the amazing Firing Line, but that makes for a fairly large audience who will be able to hear him through his son's words. A son whose love, admiration, frustration, and humanity are clear in every paragraph.
I have heard some people are upset and claim a negative portrait of Buckley emerges. Have we read the same book? For me, it made him more understandable and true to his very strong principles.
Good book, good job, thank you for writing.

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I too was moved by this work--incidentally, the first book I read on my Kindle.
While my politics are quite different from those of the Buckley family, and WFB has, over the years, committed a number of acts that I found distressing in the extreme, I admired his spirit, his glorious enjoyment of

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language, and his ability to forge and sustain friendships across most of the political spectrum (stopping rather short, however, of Gore Vidal). I have actually read more of Christopher's work than of his father's, and have followed his political misadventures with right wing true believers with some interest.

This is a family book, a grown child's book, coping with the complexities of some challenging relationships and the painful decline of once powerful parents. Buckley the Younger writes gracefully, with humor and measured candor. He successfully evokes both the public and private selves of his celebrated parents, their relationships with family and friends (including presidents, members of political, intellectual, and social elites, and family retainers), and conveys something of the challenge of finding his own place in the wider world as well as the world of his family.

Having lost my own father a couple of years ago, and with my mother in serious decline, I could well appreciate the complex mix of universal and particular emotions surrounding the illness, decline and death of one's parents which Buckley describes so well.

Reading this book helped me to take some important steps in the lengthy, perhaps unending process of coming to terms with my own relationships and losses, in a way that no "self-help" or psychological manual could. It serves the purpose of literature in a well and gracefully told set of stories at once sad and humorous, distinctive and universal.

It is a fitting epitaph for his parents, who are revealed in their idiosyncratic, sometimes infuriating humanity.

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Really enjoyed Buckley's latest book. In spite of the fact it is about Christoper being "orphaned" at 56 when he loses his parents in quick sucession I didn't find the book to be sentimental nonsense. It rang true as the author describes the devastating deterioation of his parents one by one. He

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does not gloss over the frustation of dealing with sick yet proud and obstinate parents.

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Christopher Buckely writes about the deaths of his famous parents. This isn't the book I expected, I thought it would be more a memoir but is actually a recounting of the last days and months of his parents lives. It was very touching in places, he obviously loved his parents very much, and funny

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in others as he alway is. At the same time I thought it was a little boring for "outsiders" and I hope at some time in the future he decides to write a more traditional memoir.

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This is Christopher Buckley's memoir about losing both of his parents in the span of one year, in his fifties. Buckley has a very dry and academic tone to both the way he writes and the way he read the story in the audio book. The tone he sets is the perfect respect for the people who raised him

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with such dignity and pride. But there is also a rich, dry humor that can not be mistaken. Just when you think he could droll no longer, he says something about William F Buckley Jr. pissing out the passenger door of a moving vehicle or he is writing long winded urine reports to family and friends concerned about his fathers ailing health. Truly funny stuff.
The story comes from his fresh and retching loss and the memories are raw and seamless. You, the reader, get to know the Buckley family in a way only a son can share. You go on sailing adventures with William as Pat asks why Bill is trying to kill us. The next instant you are grieving with Christo and Bill as they mourn the loss of wife and mother. You will fall head over heels for the Buckley's, even though you never knew you should.

Who would like this book? Anyone who has lost a loved one and appreciates a good candid sense of grief.

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I have enjoyed Chris Buckley's writing for quite some time, and was a great admirer of his father. I also share with Chris the fact of having lost both my parents.

While I enjoyed this book, I found it at times to be too personal and sharing too many inside details of Bill Buckley's final days. That

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being said, this is a good and interesting read, that you won't be able to put down. It is humorous and touching. I found it particularly interesting to hear Chris's side of some legendary WFB stories, especially the sailing ones.

This one if definitely worth your time.

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Christopher Buckley is the only child of the late larger than life couple of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Patricia Buckley. William was well known for his conservative newspaper column, his books and the TV show Firing Line. Patricia was well known for her glamour and her skills as a

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hostess.

Obviously, with parents like that, Christopher didn’t have an ordinary childhood. Politicians, celebrities and actors were frequent guests in the Buckley household. Trips to exotic places around the world were common. Christopher really didn’t know that his parents were all that different from anyone else’s until he was a teenager and away at boarding school, though. After his parents visited, comments from other students made him realize how unique his family was.

William and Patricia died within a year of each other and, being an only child, Christopher was the one who had to deal with making health care decisions at the end, and handling funeral and burial details.

I listened to the audio version Losing Mum and Pup which is written and read by Christopher Buckley. I wasn’t sure this was the right book for me since both of my parents are in their eighties and my dad has had some struggles lately. I decided to give it a try and just stop listening if the book became too emotional for me, and I’m glad I did.

This book certainly has some emotional moments, but it really doesn’t focus on the end of William and Patricia’s lives – rather it focuses on their relationship and what it was like to grow up with larger than life parents like them. It’s a celebration of living life to its fullest. Christopher said his goal in writing the book was to make it a “testament to their devotion,” and I think he succeeded admirably. Losing Mum and Pup had the potential to be a terribly sad book, but Christopher’s humor keeps it from being too heavy. This book is a loving tribute to his parents written by their adult son who still misses them. I think fans of memoirs and William F. Buckley, Jr. will enjoy this story, like I did.

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Wonderful blend of humor and emotion to describe a complicated and larger than life family. I loved the adventurous, no holds-barred nature of both parents.

a wonderful read. Christopher has a great sense of humor and it translates well to the page. If you want some light fun, read this book.

very well written story about the parents of author Christopher Buckley, the only child of Patricia Buckley and William F. Buckley, Jr. While not going into too much intimate detail, the books tells the good and the bad about his famous parents and the love they all shared. Lots of funny stories.

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You feel the human traits of all parents and children as well as the loss the child still feels of being orphaned.

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I was interested in what he had to say and in the discussion on handling a parent's death.

Christopher Buckley writes well and is very funny. And what a life and cast of characters to discuss. My parents were really nice people, but they weren't "great" people so I didn't live with the pressure of

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having an intellectual powerhouse or social phenomenon for a parent. Chris Buckley did, but I never felt like I couldn't relate to his life. He tells the stories so matter-of-factly that it feels more like sharing. The kind that leads you to think through your own parents' quirks and annoying or entertaining characteristics.

This is very much a book about dying or watching someone you love die. It is also about the regrets and frustrations that often accompany watching a parent die. And about dealing with the aftermath, the decisions, the condolences, and the follow-up.

I enjoyed the book very much. It entertained, it encouraged, and it caused me to revisit some of my grief over Dad's death last year.

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Amusing and beautifully written, as Buckley's books usually are, but much of the humor comes at the expense of his mother and father, whose worst traits he divulges as he chronicles their physical declines and respective deaths. While this is an affectionate memoir, it felt exploitative to me,

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written to capitalize on the relative fame of the author's parents.

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A very interesting window into the lives of Christopher Buckley and his two famous parents, William F. and Pat Buckley. Despite his exasperation with both parents over the years and the difficulty of their care in the final years of life, he maintained a deep, centered love for them. By a series of

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flashbacks, we're taken from the present crises of illness and death to some remembered vignette of his life with these two very public and talented parents. Sometimes as he relates stories of his early interaction with his parents, we wonder how he ever maintained such a fierce bond. Forinstance when his father grew bored ten minutes into Christopher's college graduation ceremony, he rounded up all of the family and friends and went off to lunch leaving Christopher to wander around looking for them and finally having lunch alone. No apologies were ever offered. Christopher, like his father, is a writer and brings wit as well as pathos into this very intimate account of the end of life experiences of two remarkable people, his parents.

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Sometimes, it's hard to tell what exactly the target audience for a book is meant to be. I'm a big Christopher Buckley fan, and I've read all his satire books from Thank You for Smoking onwards, but I didn't really know much more than cursory details about his father, William F. Buckley Jr., and

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pretty much zero about his mother, Patricia Taylor Buckley, both of whom were apparently really big figures in their own rights. This book, a memoir of the year from the death of his mother and subsequent grieving of her, the declining health and then death of his father, and then the start of the grieving process for him, was one that I passed up at first; it's not exactly the younger Buckley's oeuvre, it's not normally the type of book I read, and I didn't really have much in the way of curiosity in the final matters of his parents' lives, and the celebrations thereof.

But there it was, sitting there next to me in the biography section, and with Buckley on my mind anyway, what with his newest novel just about to come out, I decided to give it a try. The writing is typically wry, with some good turns of phrase, and some interesting takes on the absurdities of dealing with the end of life (never would our author have thought so much time and thought would hinge on the urine of his father). That said, he never loses touch of the pathos and sadness that comes from dealing with the deaths of his parents; the decline of his mother isn't dealt with in great detail, as one may surmise they weren't on the best of terms before then, but there are some good moments in dealing with her belongings after (letters from him that went unopened, for example), and the decline of the body and mind of his father, how his father tried to maintain himself, writing and talking, keeping his life in the best shape he was able to manage. He carries across real emotion, though, particularly how exasperating it can be to deal with very strong-willed people who aren't always quite there anymore. It's pretty well-balanced, though.

On the whole, this book is about what you'd expect, I suppose. Buckley manages a well-done, occasionally moving look at the process of losing one's parents, a tough time even when you're in your mid-50s. It's solid with good emotion, along with the dense and playful wordiness his books often have, and a perspective on everything that never veers too far in any direction. I don't know that I found it life-changing, but it was an interesting read, and I imagine for someone who is more in Buckley's situation might get more out of it than I did, as well. I think maybe I wasn't quite the target, but I enjoyed it well enough nevertheless.

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A small memoir by satirist Christopher Buckley, recalling the year he lost both famous parents. A few interesting anecdotes, but the book will mostly be of interst to middle-aged boomers dealing with the same problems with aging or dying parents. At least in this case money problems were not part

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of the issues Buckley had to deal with.

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Losing Mum and Pup was an interesting read. My Momila died a few years ago and my father's health is questionable so Christopher's book about losing his parents within 12 months was of great interest to me.
Christopher is a fabulous reader and the book's language and flow is one to be coveted, BUT
I

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don't know how or why he wasn't able to get to truly care about his famous mother or/and father.
It was as if his super intellectual powers removed him from the gut wrenching emotions that you know this kind of loss invokes.
I knew nothing about his parents . . . I do now, but I don't care.
I also know him better, but know that I could never comfortably sit at a table and break bread with him. We travel on two levels of life.
The book was lovely, but with his skills at putting word to paper, it could have been so much more.

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A perfectly splendid memoir, which seems an odd thing to say about a book primarily concerned with death. Buckley is hilarious, wry and incisive. He never descends into the maudlin, but he is vulnerable and open about his grief and the ways he moves through it.

The rich ARE different, of course,

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and some of the memories he shares are the stuff of dreams to the rest of us- but more of it is universal, the fabric of love and loss. Buckley's own voice is perfect for the narration, and I enjoyed listening to him speak.

There's plenty of name-dropping, how could there not be? There's a bit of dirty laundry, but nothing shocking. Mostly there is love, respect and loss interspersed with genuine hilarity.

Highly recommended.

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This was a quick, humorous read. I don't agree with a lot of Christopher Buckley's political positions, so you can only imagine how I felt about his father while he was alive. But Christopher's tender treatment of his parents, especially his father, elicited in me more sympathy than I knew I had

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for William F. Buckley, Jr. A solid 2-and-a-half stars, better than just "ok."

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Some other reviewers have called the author a whiny, self-centered, ungrateful brat, and they are entirely correct. However, if he was indeed raised by his parents (William F. Buckley jr and wife Patricia) as indicated in this memoir, they have only themselves to blame.
The stars are for the style,

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which is quite entertaining, and the name-dropping.
And somewhat for the emotional catharsis.

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I'm pretty sure that William F Buckley and Patricia Buckley were fascinating people. You have glimpses of that in this memoir, which, if this book contained more of those glimpses would make this a much better book. Instead, however, you get a whole lot of Christopher Buckley's incessant self

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absorption, navel gazing and name dropping. Bleh.

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"Parental mortality.......no matter how much you prepare for the moment, when it comes, it comes at you hot, hard and unrehearsed.

Christopher Buckley has related the passing of his parents with tenderness and humor in this extremely well written tribute to his parents.