Not My Father’s Son

Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming                  Audio Book: 6 hours, 30 mins        Hardback Book:  304 pages                   

I am a fan of biographies, particularly auto-biographies.    I like learning about the lives of other people.   I’ve always been fascinated listening to folks talk about their lives, the things they have done, the dreams they pursued or wished they had.   It gives you such an enlightening experience to learn the inner thoughts of people and how they see life.   It is a like a house tour of their personality, “…and in this room I was 14  and broke my first heart before my heart was broken,” and in this room, “ I lost the secure feeling that parents and families will always be together…”   Alan Cumming’s life is full of tragedy early on from his violently abusive father to his later life as a celebrity in the limelight to the shock of startling familial revolations.    It is a good read from beginning to end.   A map of how people become who they are and proof that after undergoing horrible circumstances perseverance guides us on.    So many misunderstandings led to the hate filled mind of his father who looked at innocent circumstances and made them vile in his mind and poured out rage in retribution.   How little someone can care is seen through the tears of a young boy trying his best to please a father who later speaks the words that nearly destroy Alan forever, that he is not his son.   From glossing over that is just the way he is to the realization that they were living with a severely mentally ill schizophrenic, Alan Cumming takes the reader through his life to current day making amends for what he thought were his own flaws that turned out to be his father’s disturbed delusions.    Good book, full of tears, smiles and a curving path of coping with rights, wrongs and total misunderstandings then knowing when sometimes you just have to walk away.   Alan Cumming takes the reader with him through his life lessons that brought him to who he is today and how he stopped letting shame name him.     Well done, Alan Cumming.    Brutally honest stripping back the skin to see the emotions inside.  Good book.