His bombastic dad thought he was weak and unmanly; his reserved mum pushed him towards books. In this extract from his new memoir, the author reveals how he escaped the parent trap
I was well into middle age before I discovered that my mother’s grandparents on both sides came from Lithuania. “Russia” was the universal answer to all our questions about the past. Where did we come from? There, out there. Where was there? They seemed to be pointing in the direction of Sale and Altrincham. Hale Barns. Well-to-do Jewish south Manchester, and we knew damn well we hadn’t come from there. Keep on asking and they tell you somewhere in the vicinity of Russia.
My mother was nothing if not critical and inevitably made a critic of me. My father, without ever reading a novel, made me a novelist because he was himself a novel. Max and Anita. Jakey, she called him. Neetie, he called her. He grew into a lovable man and would show great tenderness to me when we both were older. It was he who drove me to Piccadilly on the morning I left to start my first term at Cambridge. He found me a seat on the train, took my luggage and put it on the rack above my head. There was no hugging. He shook my hand. “Don’t forget to write to your mother,” he said.
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