The Good Wife star and Broadway luminary Alan Cumming has written a “suspenseful, deeply moving, and wickedly funny” memoir, Not My Father’s Son. The book is the #1 pick for November on ABA’s Indie Next list.
Cumming recently told People magazine, “People think of me as sort of a cheery chappy,” and from all indications he is, while now revealing his struggle and the darkness he has overcome to emerge as a dazzling and mesmerizing actor, nominated for Emmy and Drama League Awards. “This book is the most personal, intimate thing I’ve ever done.”
Plagued by a father who beat and verbally abused him during his childhood in rural Scotland, he was shocked to his core when this same man let him know in 2010 that they were not related.
Cumming recounted his turmoil to the New York Times:
“Mr. Cumming’s identity had gone through multiple cataclysms. ‘I couldn’t stop talking about it,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t stop telling the story. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’ Now, when he plays Two Truths and a Lie, his two truths are ‘My grandfather died in Malaysia playing Russian roulette’ and ‘My father recently told me I wasn’t his son.’
‘My truths are so crazy,’ he said, sounding half amused. ‘I struggle to make up an equally nutty false one.’ Eventually, he put his thoughts in writing, and the result is Not My Father’s Son, which weaves the ‘great yarn’ of 2010 with a harrowing reminiscence of his father’s violence.”
Not My Father’s Son (Day Street Books) is available now in bookstores, and you can get a free sneak peek at an excerpt in Buzz Books 2014 Fall/Winter ebook from Publishers Lunch.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Add a Comment