FILTHY BEASTS

A vivid and compelling portrait of a dysfunctional family.

For the first eight years of his life, Hamill and his two brothers lived like blue bloods. Their father’s family was “pure white-Anglo-Saxon-protestant, Mayflower-descendant, white-butler rich.” The only life they knew was filled with servants, private clubs, and luxurious New York real estate. But when his family’s “dormant demons were rustled from their slumber” and his parents divorced, the three boys moved to Bermuda with their mother, where she had grown up in a working-class family. The book, Hamill’s debut, is not a typical riches-to-rags reversal, though that’s a prominent theme. Instead, the author explores in visceral detail how children of addicted caregivers struggle to construct meaning, establish their own identities, and simply survive while living in the wake of a family illness. Hamill is a gifted storyteller, crafting scenes and dialogue that read like a riveting novel. There are casualties in this tale, both real and figurative, but there are also many triumphs. In his early 30s, the author embraced his sexuality as a gay man, a reckoning that arguably took a back seat to all the chaos and collateral damage that surrounded him. Though Hamill is unflinchingly honest about the flaws of all of the characters in the story (including himself), by the end, readers will have at least some affection for each one. The author absorbingly narrates a complicated story fraught with betrayal, abandonment, and grief, and he shows us—via his own recovery—that beauty, pain, and love can all coexist in the same space. “I started to see my mother as somebody caught in darkness,” he says, “doing whatever she could to steal glimpses of light, knowing they wouldn’t last for long. I saw how brave that was, and how sad.”

A stunning, deeply satisfying story about how we outlive our upbringings.