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Dearest Brother is a memoir that follows the author’s quest to re-discover the brother he lost through suicide in 1980. After thirty years of anger and guilt that caused him to suppress and deny his brother and his short life, his journey takes him back into his own shared past of a post-war childhood and boarding school separation from itinerant parents. Then off to Western Australia where his brother spent four formative years at university during the late sixties and early seventies.
Eight thousand miles from home with only a fortnightly letter to maintain the family ties, his letters provide a unique narrative as he negotiated a time of cultural and political turbulence where new-found freedoms liberated and confused in equal measure. Sex and drugs and wild dreams of a better future pervade his student life.
Next, the inquiry moves back to the UK, where Andrew must excavate his own suppressed memories of a brother whose life had glittered with promise but was now blighted by a growing mental illness.
An excellent book: wonderfully well written, honest and extremely wise.
Nick Luxmoore Author: Young People, Death and the Unfairness of Everything
I have just finished reading this book, every word, which I found fascinating, remarkable, compelling and very very moving. Is there another book like it, I wonder.
I think the author has been very brave. He has hit upon a masterly form, from the beginning to hold the two time periods in balance. The present journey is as important as the journey back into time, and the letters on the Dreamliner a masterly invention to hold the two narratives together. It is indeed in the form of a quest, and we the readers have to stay with you. We are kept by the author's side, enthralled.
There can not be another book like it? . . . . . .BBC ‘Book of the week’ perhaps? but in ten instalments. It would read aloud so well, full of voice. But it is not just a tale, there is so much wisdom and exploration and honesty and insight in the writing, but that unfolds gradually so the author's journey is the reader’s journey too. The author is very kind and understanding, as well as astutely interesting.
It is also timely or ‘of our time’ with the text locking into the texts of our time, with the quotes and references. Not for nothing does our reading matter and provide the anchors and docks we need. The honesty and understanding about people emerges as the time moves on. Simon Clements
People brush suicide under the carpet, but it stays there. It has taken 40 years for Andrew Bethell to look it in the eye, but he has now written a brilliant book about the life and death of his handsome, attractive, admired and much-loved brother Robin. The author is wonderfully unafraid of words like drugs, madness, suicide, hanging. No euphemisms. Everyone who knows of a suicide will find themselves better equipped by all that they will have to think about as they read the book. Yes, of course, I am one of them too, and I find this a remarkably courageous, honest and restorative book. Alison Cobb
The first time I read this book, these were the words I jotted down.Haunting, interesting, beautifully written, brutally honest, thought-provoking, memory-stimulating — the experience was wonderful and has stayed with me, in my thoughts and my feelings, all the day long. PC. Maine USA
This site offers a variety of supplementary material related to Dearest Brother including facsimile examples from the many letters that are quoted in the text, photos from the family album, videos referred to in the text and art work that has been inspired by the search for Robin.
There is also a comment section for responses or queries.
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