We’ve needed to have this conversation for some time: losing a loved one to an untimely death is a life-shattering experience, but to lose somebody by suicide is world changing. Nothing can ever be the same, but how do we go on living with the knowledge that they were failed? John Niven’s O Brother is a touching memoir and tribute to the author’s brother, Gary, who died by suicide in 2010. Pieced together from memories and medical records, Niven weaves an unflinching homage to the life his brother lived: his vulnerabilities; his anger; and how he was failed by public services when he needed it most.
This is a brave and vital memoir, which will undoubtedly spark conversations around male suicide. Much like Seán Hewitt’s All Down Darkness Wide, O Brother is a missive to a love lost: “Come back. Give me five minutes ... There were things I needed to say.”
O Brother begins with the end: Gary is on life support in a Scottish hospital. Earlier that night, he called emergency services for help. Medical negligence meant that depression took him while he was waiting to be seen in the hospital. From here, Niven takes the reader on the journey of how it came to this: prison; poverty; addiction. However, the building blocks were placed in childhood. There’s a powerfully unsettling memory when as a child, Gary can no longer contain an eruption of undirected anger and takes it out on himself with a blunt knife. He was sent to his room, forever tarred as being disruptive.
The reader is given a glimpse into faltering mental health, one which fractured further along the masculinity fault lines when, in the 1990s, it reaches a crescendo when he pours his frustration into raves and ecstasy pills.
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The anecdotes in O Brother are incredible, particularly those about Niven’s run-ins with Joe Strummer of The Clash taking a slash beside him in a pub in Soho. The Clash could feature as a bit-player in this memoir, for the frequency they appear in Niven’s life!
This is a difficult read, but one which I hope stands the test of time, allowing us to read anger as frustration, a cry for help.
