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Published Apr 2024
336 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Sylvia Brownrigg's "wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir" (Carol Edgarian) reconstructs a poignant story of fathers lost and found
When Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did.
Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick's own father, Gawen—also absent—had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide.
Reconstructing Gawen's short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she writes movingly of daughterhood and of parenthood, gradually making her own story whole.
"Engrossing ... Brownrigg's skillful interweaving of slippery narrative threads adds up to an immersive reading experience." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Brownrigg delves into the facts and fictions that shaped her family for generations, weaving the newly discovered revelations with the copious correspondence her father kept up during his lifetime and her own evolving understanding of her father. The result will especially resonate with those whose own family histories contain secrets." —Booklist
"A legacy of absent fathers haunts Berkeley author Sylvia Brownrigg, who traces the story of her father, who lived off the grid in Northern California, as well as her grandfather's far-flung, colorful life, in this probing memoir." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Sylvia Brownrigg's wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir delves into that great mystery we call family and, in particular, fathers—the ones we come in with and those we acquire. This book affirms that while you can't pick your ancestors or the secrets they harbor, a writer with a keen eye and open heart can have the last word." —Carol Edgarian, author of Vera
"Brownrigg takes us on an alluring and absorbing voyage through the roiling generations of her family as she pursues the central mystery of her paternal grandfather—in death and life—and its ramifications for her father and herself. A deft and engaging storyteller, she navigates four continents' worth of secrets, silences, and absences in scenes fleshed out with warmth, wit, and vivid immediacy. The story that unfurls invites us to explore the fierce power of parental and filial love that, by its relative presence or absence, reaches across eras of history and lives." —Leta McCollough Seletzky, author of The Kneeling Man
"The Whole Staggering Mystery is a remarkable achievement. Spanning decades and continents, yet psychologically intimate and precise, bringing to vivid life the unforgettable characters that people Sylvia Brownrigg's family, this haunting book offers at once the satisfaction of memoir and the revelations of fiction." —Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs
This information about The Whole Staggering Mystery was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction, including the novels Morality Tale; The Delivery Room, winner of the Northern California Book Award; Pages for You, winner of the Lambda Award; and The Metaphysical Touch; and a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World. Brownrigg's works have been included in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times lists of notable fictions and have been translated into several languages. Her novel for children, Kepler's Dream, written under the name Juliet Bell was published in 2012 and turned into a feature film. Brownrigg lives with her family in London and in Berkeley, California.
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