The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton

by Sathnam Sanghera

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

920

Genres

Collections

Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction, Mind and Body

Publication

Penguin Books (2009), Edition: 48336th, 336 pages

Description

When Sathnam Sanghera was twenty-four years old he discovered a secret about his father that would both darken, and illuminate his life. His father had been schizophrenic for almost all his adult life and, in the early years of his marriage to Sathnam's mother, had been terrifyingly violent towards his family. The discovery would set the author on a journey into his family's past- from his father's harsh life in rural Punjab, to the terrifying early years of his parents' marriage in England; from his mother's extraordinary resilience as she brought up her young family in a foreign land, without any knowledge of its language, to the author's happy memories of his own childhood - his obsessions with George Michael and how to have the perfect top knot. And, most affectingly of all, this discovery would finally force Sanghera's own secret life into the glaring light- his longing for romantic love which he had, for fear of family rejection, kept utterly hidden from his beloved mother in the Midlands.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member coolmama

A charming memoir by Sathnam (an award winning UK journalist) who in order to find out about the schizophrenia that plagues his father and his sister, discovers more about his immigrant Indian household, especially his mother.

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LibraryThing member Ami_Ruparelia

A lovely book! Read it so many times and it always makes me laugh and cry. Already started reading his second book and can't wait to finish it. A heart warming story, which makes us all think about our families, their eccentricities and their struggles.

LibraryThing member LyzzyBee

26 April 2014 – from Gill, around World Book Night)

My friend Gill passed this to me as it was the book she was giving away for World Book Night. I read a lot of ‘children of immigrants in the UK’ and ‘tales of emigration’ books, so I thought I knew what I was expecting, but this packed

quite the emotional punch. Full of substance, feeling and discussing matters that are important to discuss – I’m not going to give the main theme away as I certainly didn’t know what it was before reading the book, but a simple discovery blows the author’s ideas about his family wide apart, and he has to work to draw the edges of his experience back together and make sense of it.

Sathnam decided to write a family memoir once he’d found out the reason for some strange behaviour on his family’s part and a reluctance to face up to things on his own. He’s searingly honest about his own role in the family dynamic and his need to partition his life into a London and a Wolverhampton section, and about his ability to block out truths he doesn’t want to see and avoid his own responsibilities: this book charts his decision and action to take responsibility and face up to things. He’s also honest about general problems in the Sikh communities in the UK and India and among the 2nd generation British citizens of whom he’s a member, and his experience as a journalist allows him to do the necessary research and synthesize it into a coherent whole …

However, he finds that his family history resists fitting into neat categories and realises that it’s easier to find out facts about a golden-tinged celeb than it is about a poor Asian immigrant who is illiterate and has health problems. He ends up including letters he wrote and letters he didn’t send, and verbatim reports of conversations, as well as the history of his family and his own probings of his relationships with his family members. It’s not all misery, though – it’s wry and funny where it needs to be, and full of affection and respect for his family. A good read.

It was a WBN book so I'm passing it on via BookCrossing

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LibraryThing member sianpr

This memoir starts off light and funny but takes a dark turn when Sathnam Sanghera finally discovers that his father & sister suffer from schizophrenia & that his mother suffered terrible domestic violence when she arrived in the UK aged 16 from India. However, Sanghera maintains a gentle humour

throughout - not least on his visit to Wolverhampton 'tourist' office and his imagined letters to incompetent officials & in the final hurdle he has to cross- a letter to his mother about his desire to live his own life.

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LibraryThing member pgchuis

This was excellent, and was indeed full of love, secrets and lies. What struck me the most was the incredible vulnerability of the totally illiterate and those who don't speak the language of the country in which they live. Why would you never learn it?

Anyway, very moving and thought-provoking.

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