The Chinese proverb “It can be difficult to find a black cat in a darkened room, especially when there is no black cat” is how Neil Griffiths – author and founder of The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses – describes the childhood depicted vividly in his memoir The Wrong Son. Griffiths’ last novel, 2017’s As A God Might Be, questioned the merits of religion, gaining props from then-Archbishop Of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
The Wrong Son kicks off smoothly – until a harrowing car crash, circa the early 1960s, which results in Griffiths’ father losing his wife, pregnant at the time, as well as his young son. Not long after, he meets a married woman who abandons her own husband and child to be with him. Two years later, this book’s author is born, and enters a family unit where all is far from peachy. Guilt and grief alike have taken a devastating hold and clouded emotions, resulting in a perfectionist mother and unfeeling father.
Griffiths manages to navigate and survive his childhood existence, but not without bearing psychological scars. What he does cleverly in The Wrong Son is draw up the findings of psychoanalysts D.W. Winnicott and Jaques Lacan, with the latter resonating with him more profoundly. (Lacan believed that one’s self is shaped by the emotional environment they were born into; conversely, some of Winnicott’s beliefs seem more questionable today.)
As a result, The Wrong Son is both highly engaging and educational. Think Charles Bukowski crossed with Nick Cave and an added dose of psychoanalysis and you will be close to what Griffiths has achieved here.
