LEARNING TO THINK

A British journalist recalls a childhood in public housing in the countryside outside Birmingham in the 1970s and ’80s.

King’s father died when she was 12. First told that the death was the result of an aneurysm, and then that it was a murder, she only recently delved into the actual events of the death, finding an explanation she wasn't expecting. Her memoir, rigorous and compelling, falls into two parts: one in which she interrogates her memories, attempting to determine whether she has been deluding herself about what happened in the past, and another in which she researches her father's death, going back through the paperwork associated with it and interviewing the people who were there. At the center is an attempt to be fair to all the members of her family: the engineer father who drank heavily and couldn't hold a job, but who was kind to his wife and children; the agoraphobic mother who eventually freed herself; the sister who refused to go to school; and King herself, outgoing and sociable as a child but plagued by familial trauma. The author evenhandedly explores the influence of religion on the family, which belonged to a fundamentalist church led by a minister who conducted an exorcism on King shortly after her father's death. For King, the turning point that led her out of a chaotic life was when, after completing university and while working one of many short-lived jobs that followed, she read a book by Carl Sagan and was struck by the line, “but I could be wrong.” Her own internalization of that sentiment led both to a career in science writing and to this memoir, which offers a careful deconstruction of the past. The book is all the more affecting due to King's determination to keep it low-key.

A scrupulous, memorable account.