David Bouchier

An Unexpected Life by David Bouchier presents a delightfully humorous and intensely readable memoir, all told in essay-like chapters that encompass life, the universe and everything. It’s a book you can pick up and put down at the end of each chapter, but you’re bound to pick it up again as soon as time allows. Each essay/chapter follows naturally from the last, each tied to a specific time and place, a particular period in the author’s own life, and a particular step in a quest for meaning and direction. But this really isn’t a book of essays; rather a book in essays, each passage drawing the reader inexorably into a real world with real history and real sociology, while real time passes, and ending on a question that leads to the next. The result is deeply fascinating and satisfying, like meeting someone and realizing you’ve actually got something in common, and the things you haven’t got in common won’t stop you from being great friends.

I should confess, I do have something in common with the author. I’m English too. I’ve wandered the streets of London with my husband whose parents moved south to avoid the Blitz. I lived in Cambridge for quite a while, even attended university there. I was too young for the world of demonstrations and rebellion, but that world affected me. And I immigrated to the States after debating long and hard about where my family should end up living and why—not quite accidental in my case, but it feels it sometimes.

David Bouchier was born in London and saw the bombs that fell. I was born in Manchester and grew up with bomb sites in town. I’m younger than he, and his story fascinates me. His voice is delightfully English. His sense of humor has me laughing out loud. His sense of history has me deep in thought. His sense for place—his delight in France, for example, that takes me back to vacations spent there—is pitch perfect, recreating what I know and inviting me into places I’ve never been. His search for meaning, while not the same as mine, is filled with curiosity, intensity, and a delightful urge to question everything he finds.

Religion, politics, nationalism, education, technology, motorbikes and cats! In our fast-changing world, perhaps it’s only the cats that stay constant. But this author’s intelligently inquisitive point of view is a constant throughout this book, his humor delights from every page, and his writing is an invitation to listen, to read and to find out about ourselves as well as him. Of all the memoirs I’ve ever read, this is the one I love most!

Disclosure: I was given a preview edition by the publisher and I truly love this book!… (mais)