My mother, my self

To tell this story of his search for a mother lost to mystery in early infancy, its author uses the techniques of documentary drama. He describes past scenes and conversations in extreme, atmospheric detail: a particular dream on a particular night in the 1940s, a conversation in the 1950s. Perhaps his work as a screenwriter has helped in this, but it is the clarity of his prose and the emotional significance of his search that ensure an entirely plausible imaginative reconstruction.

As one would in reviewing a novel, the characters may be described in the present tense. So George, the author’s father, Anglo-French, hailing from the Seychelles, Catholic, a keen gardener (he grows his own pipe tobacco), is a kindly, concerned parent who has slipped in the social hierarchy but is doing his best for his children. Despite his exotic background there is something familiarly English in his reserve, shyness and concern with the social proprieties.