An unflinching, brilliantly written, darkly funny, lavishly illustrated memoir by the acclaimed author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A ringing testament about how one artist sees the world, and how his experiences have shaped his vision
Simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least he had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham.
Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about knickerbocker glories and heart surgery, about papier mâché and mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. It’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood, some of them altered in unforgiveable ways. As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.
Mark Haddon is the author of the bestselling novels The Red House and A Spot of Bother. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award–winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, has written and illustrated numerous children’s books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.
View titles by Mark Haddon
An unflinching, brilliantly written, darkly funny, lavishly illustrated memoir by the acclaimed author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A ringing testament about how one artist sees the world, and how his experiences have shaped his vision
Simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least he had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham.
Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about knickerbocker glories and heart surgery, about papier mâché and mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. It’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood, some of them altered in unforgiveable ways. As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.
Mark Haddon is the author of the bestselling novels The Red House and A Spot of Bother. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award–winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, has written and illustrated numerous children’s books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.
View titles by Mark Haddon
