Kid Gloves

An extremely funny, painful and perceptive book about family relationsWhen his widowed father - once a high court judge and always a formidable figure - drifted into vagueness if not dementia, the writer Adam Mars-Jones took responsibility for his care. Intimately trapped in the London flat where the family had always lived, the two men entered an oblique new stage in their relationship. Kid Gloves is a highly entertaining book about (among other things) families, the legal profession, and the vexed question of Welsh identity. It is necessarily also a book about the writer himself - and the implausible, long-delayed moment, some years before, when he told his sexually conservative father about his own orientation. The supporting cast includes Ian Fleming, the Moors Murderers, Jacqueline Bisset and Gilbert O'Sullivan, the singer-songwriter whose trademark look kept long shorts from their rightful place on the fashion pages for so many years.

“To read the flow of his sentences is how I imagine a cat feels when it is stroked. To call him one of the best writers in the country seems a pointless equivocation, for, at the moment, I can't think of anyone better.”

He has written the truth as he saw it, and written it with passion, charm - and self-awareness -- Craig Brown Mail on Sunday The book brims with humour and each sentence is a delight to read. It also contains - courtesy of an extended metaphor drawn from Jane Grigson's recipe for cooking salmon in a court-bouillon - one of the best descriptions of sibling rivalry in contemporary literature. Above all, it is a celebration of language, a love shared by father and son alike -- Andrew Wilson Independent There is much that is moving in Mars-Jones's memoir of his father... The writing sings with cleverness and wit -- Claudia FitzHerbert Sunday Telegraph

Adam Mars-Jones is the author of three novels, The Waters of Thirst, Pilcrow and Cedilla, and two collections of short stories, Lantern Lecture and Monopolies of Loss. He is also the author of Blind Bitter Happiness, a book of essays, and Noriko Smiling, a book about Ozu's film Late Spring. He lives in London.

'One of the best memoirs not only of this year but many ... takes a family situation that would have prompted many writers to gory score-settling - a liberal gay son providing end-of-life care to his father, a homophobic Tory judge - and produces an account that manages to be tender, sharp and funny' Mark Lawson, New Statesman , Books of the Year 'A masterpiece ... his most remarkable book to date' Richard Canning, Literary Review 'A funny, tough, scrupulously fair memoir ... Their vexed relationship, rich in vulnerability, frustration and farce, is unpacked for us with grace and subtle wit' Elizabeth Lowry, The Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year 'Witty, sardonic and humane ... I was beguiled' Margaret Drabble, New Statesman , Books of the Year 'An acutely funny writer' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday 'The best book about a father and a son ever' Brian Morton, The Tablet

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