Mother's Boy

One of the all-time great memoirs'' Daily Telegraph''Wonderful...candid shrewd and moving'' William Boyd''Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious'' Simon SchamaHoward Jacobson''s funny revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer.Howard Jacobson was forty when his first novel was published. In Mother''s Boy he traces the life that brought him there. Born into a working-class Jewish family in 1940s Manchester he did not lack encouragement or subject matter. Jacobson takes us from childhood and studying at Cambridge through landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor and on to his first marriage and the birth of his son. Later he begins new - and often surprising - ventures in places as disparate as London Wolverhampton Boscastle and Melbournefused with bittersweet memories of Jacobson''s parents and friends this is the story of a writer''s beginnings and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be.''Hilariously brilliant'' David Baddiel''Howard Jacobson brilliantly transforms calamity into rip-roaring comedy'' Craig Brown Mail on Sunday