“There was a green carpet…the colour of algae, the damp green of penicillin. I remember how it smelt, it was like a living thing, the pelt of something that hid terrified and shivering. The bed was big. It smelt like it had been having rough, non consensual sex with the carpet.”
Such are the real estate reminiscence of A.A.Gill’s early digs when he was an alcohol addled student painter. Such is the tone of his memoir, POUR ME : A LIFE.
One of the reasons of writing the book of his life, Gill assures us, is that he can’t really remember any of it – childhood, school, holidays, friends, drinking.
The act of writing, of tapping keys, might jog something, lead back to clues, digging a hole to discover his young self.
Whether that discovery is truly made is moot, but there is no denying the voyage to the discovery is a rollicking, weaving, appallingly compulsive read.
When his mother got wind of the venture, she admonished her son -”This memoir, this thing you’re writing, it’s best if you leave me out. I’ve been thinking…better not say anything. No, I don’t want to be mentioned. You can be unkind. You think it’s funny.”
Gill’s sense of funny, his acerbic wit, is born of anger. Following sage advice that anger is best turned into wit he has written an intoxicating memoir, drunk on words, delirious in description, tipsy with character and incident.
Arrogant and opinionated, Gill is lacerating in his eloquence.
For someone diagnosed with dyslexia Gill has a prodigious gift for expression and description and as the book gallops along, the lost weekend of his youth gives way to a career in journalism that encompasses the hot water of restaurant reviewing and the hotspots covered as a foreign correspondent.
A.A. Gill, full to the gills, drunk like a fish, confesses he misused a life for thirty years, a misuse that included the abuse of others. But since undertaking A.A. he has been given a second chance, thirty years he has used better, though not as well as he might.
“I’ve had a family I never thought I would, I fell in love with a handful of women who are still my friends, and whom I never cease to love. I found a corner to work in where I never imagined there would be space for me and I’ve made a living by watching television, eating in restaurants and traveling to see things that are generally just shown to soldiers, missionaries and journalists.”
Dry as the perfect Martini, POUR ME encourages binge reading and leaves a hangover of heartbreak, humour and hope. Cheers!
POUR ME : A LIFE by A.A.Gill is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson for about the price of a bottle of scotch.