Overview

An unflinching, brilliantly written, darkly funny, lavishly illustrated memoir by the acclaimed author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time:  A ringing testament about how one artist sees the world, and how his experiences have shaped his vision Simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least he had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about knickerbocker glories and heart surgery, about papier mâché and mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. It’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood, some of them altered in unforgiveable ways. As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.

Full Product Details

9780385551892

Table of Contents

Reviews

“I loved Leaving Home. It made me honk with laughter at times, and feel incredibly moved at others. I found it tender, addictive, informative and unlike anything else – and brilliantly illustrated. It’s a gem.” ―Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry “I loved this funny, melancholy and arrestingly original memoir of an artist's coming into being. It also made me quite badly want a Walnut Whip.” ―Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent and Enlightenment “His distillation of the fear and powerlessness of childhood is so deeply moving and beautifully drawn. . . . The most tender, transporting, creative and beautifully written tale I have read all year. In Leaving Home, Mark Haddon turns words, images and his trademark empathy upon himself to conjure all the repressed emotion, strained relationships, shyness, humour and orange formica of his childhood in 1970s provincial England. Simply glorious, from start to finish.” ―Rachel Clarke, author of The Story of a Heart “As well as being startlingly―sometimes shockingly―honest, this memoir is consistently funny and consistently heartbreaking. The result for me was a kind of emotional whiplash, pain then laughter, warmth then brutality―all in service of rendering the complexities of family life in full colour.” ―Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine “In Mark Haddon's moving collage-like memoir, significant moments in the author's life add up to a wondrous whole and provocative worldview. . . . Haddon's bracing, raw honesty reveals his struggle with mental illness, his love for his wife and two children, his views on spirituality, and the life-giving force of his writing. . . . Haddon's recollections create a moving cumulative effect; he gives readers the space to savor his epiphanies and arrive at their own.” —Shelf Awareness

Author Information

MARK HADDON is a writer and artist. His bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) won seventeen literary prizes, was translated into XX languages, and went on to become an award-winning stage adaptation by Simon Stephens. His most recent works of fiction include a novel, The Porpoise (2019), and a collection of fables and stories, Dogs and Monsters (2024).

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