Me and my Mum and Pup, Ed and Anne Fleishman

Novelist/social satirist Christopher Buckley 's new memoir Losing Mum and Pup--is my suggested read for Father's Day...and beyond.

Here's what it's about. In the course of a year (2007-2008), only-child Christo (his family nickname) lost both of his charismatic, extraordinary parents, Pat and Bill Buckley.  If you read Vanity Fair and the New York Times and Washington Post society and/or political columns, you probably already know a lot about Chris and his folks. But if not, mother Pat, was the society hostess and fashionista who was best friends with Nancy Reagan and Nan Kempner and Henry and Nancy Kissinger. (There is a lot of name dropping in this book) Pat raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute and the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and looked great doing it.  Christopher's father, William F. Buckley, was the prolific author and columnist, devout Catholic, proud Republican and bastion of the conservative movement.  Christpher himself wrote the book that the film Thank You For Smoking was based upon, as well as a parody of our judicial system called Supreme Courtship.

Both Pat and Bill Buckley were in failing health when they died in their eighties--Pat dying in the hospital from complications of a leg infection and William F. dying at home at his writing desk, suffering from diabetes and emphysema.

This book offers an inside look at a famous family--but also a universal look at what it feels like to be a grown up child mourning the loss of parents.

Here is an example of the inside look at a famous family thing. On the stormy winter night after William F. Buckley died, son Christopher held a candlelight vigil by the coffin at his father's Connecticut home. He comforted himself and honored his Yale man father by playing  a CD of Yale's  all-male a capella choir, The Whiffenpoofs, singing, among other songs, Time After Time.  I have actually heard the Whiffenpoofs sing this song  live and in concert (live long enough and anything can happen--even to a girl from Queens). It actually is quite moving. Still, I can't imagine mourning any of my own family members this way. Can you?

Meanwhile, on the universal experience front, there is a scene with Christopher seated at Pat Buckley's deathbed, where he whispers to her, "I forgive you."  I bet a lot of parents and children would like to whisper this to each other sooner or later, it they are unable to say it out loud.

But there's humor, too, Here's a description of his mother's  exaggerated story telling, including the claim (untrue) that Queen Elizabeth always visited her childhood home in Vancouver--whenever the Queen was in town: 

"When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a thirteenth-century saint being buried alive at the stake.... The funny thing was that he rarely challenged her when she was in the midst of one of her glorious confections. For that matter, no one did. They wouldn't have dared. Mum had a regal way about her that did not brook contradiction. The only time she ever threatened to spank me was when I questioned her, age seven, in front of others, following one of her more absurd claims, when I said "Oh, come off it!" Her fluent mendacity, combined with adamantine confidence, made her truly indomitable."

Did you catch all those big words  Chris uses?  It's a family trait.  Says one anonymous reviewer on Amazon. com "I wonder what Christopher Buckley's first spoken words were. I'm guessing not mama or dada".

Okay, now that you know what the book is about, let me tell you what my library patrons have been saying about it.

Some love it and some hate it--there doesn't appear to be a middle ground. The people who love it, are mostly, like me, the children of still living older parents. Like me and Christo, they feel the mix of love, admiration, guilt and exasperation. The people who hate it are the still living older parents. They think that the book is morbid--especially with the details of Pat and Bill's physical and mental decline. And just who the hell does Chris think he is, telling his mother that he forgives her? What arrogance!

ALL OF WHICH MAKES THIS BOOK A PERFECT ONE FOR BOOK DISCUSSIONS!

I'll even throw in some discussion questions--which can be used for any type of memoir.

1) What is the difference between an autobiography and a memoir? Hint: An autobiography, to me, is like a black and white newspaper photograph. Hopefully, barring Photoshop and staging--what you see is what you get. There are dates and facts and direct quotes.  A memoir is more like an impressionistic painting--there are swirls and dots and colors you may or may not like--and far more is open to interpretation.  Bill and Hillary Clinton wrote autobiographies. Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes) and Barack Obama (Dreams From My Father) wrote memoirs--about their own Mums and Pups.

2)Do you trust the narrator as a person and as a storyteller?  Why or why not? That's the first question that I ask book groups whenever we read a  memoir. Do we think they are telling the truth or are they making up their personal history? And can anyone really tell anyway?

3) Is that the narrator the most memorable person in this memoir--and if not, who is?

4)  Can you personally relate to any of the conflicts presented here and if so, how?

5) Did the writer succeed in creating a sense of place--could you see the house, the country, or other settings where the story was set--or was there more reliance on dialog? What other literary tools did they use to share their world with you?

Maybe you want to celebrate Father's Day first and read this book a few weeks afterwards.

Let me know what you think and what other memoirs you recommend.