Review of 'My Family: The Memoir' by David Baddiel

David Baddiel at the Falmouth Book Festival.

Written by Verity Borras

If there’s one word to describe comedian and author David Baddiel, it’s ‘honest’.

We learn this early on in his new novel My Family: The Memoir, as his radical aversion to lying allows us deep into the world he grew up in and invites us to wince alongside him as he recounts the uncomfortable moments his honesty has landed him in.

The book follows on from Baddiel’s Olivier-nominated stand-up show My Family: Not The Sitcom but goes far more in depth. From his mother’s escape from Nazi Germany as a child to his own childhood spent in North London, Baddiel chronicles the details of his family with pragmatism and a sometimes-uncomfortable level of self-awareness. Written in a voice packed with scepticism, this memoir gives us permission to reflect on those things that, as a society, we have decided we shouldn’t say or think about those closest to us.

Throughout the book, Baddiel remains down to earth and paints a candid picture of himself as a product of his upbringing. His experience with his mother’s affair, his father’s dementia, and the grief that followed losing them both, are handled with wit yet manage to maintain a level of tenderness at key moments. The nature of his writing voice is never tinged with malice or bitterness, but the softness at these points is all the more touching knowing that Baddiel is not one to hold back on criticisms in the novel.

While it may not be expected to receive such a well-rounded tour through the seasons of life from a book with such emphasis on his mother’s collection of golf memorabilia, the proof of its possibility exists in My Family: The Memoir. With a gift for storytelling and an exceptional ability to recount fame from the perspective of a ‘regular person’, Baddiel gives the reader no reason to doubt that they are getting the full story with plenty of laugh-out-loud (no, really) moments along the way.