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Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father
When his widowed father - once a high court judge and always a formidable figure - drifted into vagueness if not dementia, the writer Adam Mars-Jones took responsibility for his care. Intimately trapped in the London flat where the family had always lived, the two men entered an oblique new stage in their relationship. In the aftermath of an unlooked-for intimacy, Mars-Jones has written a book devoted to particular emotions and events. Kid Gloves is a highly entertaining book about (among other things) families, the legal profession, and the vexed question of Welsh identity. It is necessarily also a book about the writer himself - and the implausible, long-delayed moment, some years before, when he told his sexually conservative father about his own orientation, taking the homophobic bull by the horns. The supporting cast includes Ian Fleming, the Moors Murderers, Jacqueline Bisset and Gilbert O'Sullivan, the singer-songwriter whose trademark look kept long shorts from their rightful place on the fashion pages for so many years.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published August 27, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
December 28, 2016
Meh.
Yes, he writes well at times and tells chucklesome anecdotes. I read it from from front page to last with some enjoyment. It was like half-listening to a Radio 4 'amusing' documentary about a minor figure in public life.
My problem is that there are probably hundreds of better written, riveting accounts of families rotting away in publishers' slush piles. The difference? They were written by ordinary people without the 'golden ticket' of a public school and Oxbridge education. Mr Mars-Jones, like so many recipients of establishment privilege, doesn't even appear to know that the way the world works for him doesn't for the rest of us.
He writes his amusing family vignette calls up a publisher friend (perhaps they went to the same college) and next thing there's his advance 'old chap' with a request to 'tidy it up bit here and there' and a promise of putting together a very nice little coffee table edition on a special Penguin imprint called Particular Books.
Like I said at the start. Meh.
Yes, he writes well at times and tells chucklesome anecdotes. I read it from from front page to last with some enjoyment. It was like half-listening to a Radio 4 'amusing' documentary about a minor figure in public life.
My problem is that there are probably hundreds of better written, riveting accounts of families rotting away in publishers' slush piles. The difference? They were written by ordinary people without the 'golden ticket' of a public school and Oxbridge education. Mr Mars-Jones, like so many recipients of establishment privilege, doesn't even appear to know that the way the world works for him doesn't for the rest of us.
He writes his amusing family vignette calls up a publisher friend (perhaps they went to the same college) and next thing there's his advance 'old chap' with a request to 'tidy it up bit here and there' and a promise of putting together a very nice little coffee table edition on a special Penguin imprint called Particular Books.
Like I said at the start. Meh.
May 3, 2019
This memoir of his high court judge father promises more than it delivers. There are plenty of entertaining anecdotes, mainly about his father’s involvement with some famous court cases. It’s also fascinating in the insights it gives to living and growing up in the strange enclosed world of Grays Inn. But it becomes a rather slow build up to the drama of Adam Mars-Jones coming out as gay to his homophobic father. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a bit of a damp squib.
December 6, 2016
These memories have no structure at all, they just meander from one subject to another and do require more background knowledge of British culture than I can come up with.
March 31, 2020
Essentially a long ramble about his difficult, domineering dad, but the hook here is that Mars-Jones is one of the most insightful and wittiest writers alive. It’s like a fireside chat with a good friend who’s the best story teller you know. Because it’s a life story, no detail - as persnickety as it may first appear - is off topic. Delightful.
July 15, 2017
Subtitled ‘A Voyage Round My Father’ (borrowing from John Mortimer’s memorable biography), this is a subtle and charming memoir from one of Britain’s leading gay writers. William Mars-Jones was a Queens Counsel, a Knight and a High Court Judge. As a father he was somewhat Victorian, not touchy-feely like today’s dads (up to and including Prince William), not noted for humour, more generous with criticism than praise. He was also homophobic, making him a less than ideal parent for Adam. The process by which he came to terms with his son’s homosexuality was a slow one, helped to a considerable degree by the onset of dementia. Ironically it was the gay son who offered the most support during the judge’s long decline.
Adam takes us through some of the highlights of his father’s illustrious career, but it is the family ‘saga’ that provides the most engrossing element of the book. Some of the peripheral characters are wonderfully presented: the agency carers, lawyers great and small, and Adam’s lovers (odd that he makes them peripheral to his memoir) – one of whom died of Aids at 26.
William’s wife, Sheila, died before him, of a grim cancer. She died at home, in a separate bedroom from her husband to spare him, with his own health struggles, full exposure to her death. ‘She had uncoupled the marital train and left her husband behind in a siding,’ Adam writes in one of the book’s many memorable sentences. ‘It was kid gloves all round,’ he explains the title, ‘some of them elbow-length, in the debutante or drag-queen manner.’
The book is written with dry humour and a measured detachment, but the reader is always aware of the pain and the grief that have been the author’s frequent companions. His late father ought to be immensely proud of him.
Adam takes us through some of the highlights of his father’s illustrious career, but it is the family ‘saga’ that provides the most engrossing element of the book. Some of the peripheral characters are wonderfully presented: the agency carers, lawyers great and small, and Adam’s lovers (odd that he makes them peripheral to his memoir) – one of whom died of Aids at 26.
William’s wife, Sheila, died before him, of a grim cancer. She died at home, in a separate bedroom from her husband to spare him, with his own health struggles, full exposure to her death. ‘She had uncoupled the marital train and left her husband behind in a siding,’ Adam writes in one of the book’s many memorable sentences. ‘It was kid gloves all round,’ he explains the title, ‘some of them elbow-length, in the debutante or drag-queen manner.’
The book is written with dry humour and a measured detachment, but the reader is always aware of the pain and the grief that have been the author’s frequent companions. His late father ought to be immensely proud of him.
May 28, 2024
This is a sporadically touching, amusing, well observed memoir of Adam Mars-Jones' father, William Mars-Jones, a High Court judge. There's inevitably a lot in there about the author too, which again is fitfully interesting. The book was written 15 or so years after his father's death, in between 'Cedilla' and 'Caret' the second and third of Mars-Jones' lengthy novels in his 'Pilcrow' trilogy. I don't know if Mars-Jones approached it as a necessary piece of relief, a different sort of writing, but the whole book has a slightly scrappy feel to it. Deliberately unstructured yes, but rather undisciplined too - overlong (even though it's not a long book) and not desperately well edited. For example there is a long attempt to detail one of his father's cases which went to the Court of Appeal, where the author, who is obviously not a lawyer, flounders pretty amateurishly and rather painfully around the legal issues. There are other self-indulgences which don't add anything, including a fairly odd conclusion where it really feels as if Mars-Jones was struggling for a way to end the book. Overall, despite these flaws, worthwhile.
October 3, 2017
In his memoir KID GLOVES: A VOYAGE AROUND MY FATHER, Adam Mars-Jones cuts his poor father very little slack. When his dad expresses condolences, albeit in a clumsy fashion, his son finds fault with the wording. When Mars-Jones senior laments his own failure to be demonstrative and tactile with his children, the son remains unimpressed. And when the father finally comes to an accommodation with his son's sexuality, the latter reacts with irritation and scepticism. I know that I would welcome any apology from my father but sadly, he is inherently incapable of taking responsibility for anything. Having said all that, I really enjoyed the book. The author is, however, guilty of one of my pet hates, in the overuse of 'strong', 'strongly', 'clear', 'clearly' and some completely unnecessary 'in terms of'.
June 26, 2024
A son's story of their father, told during his time nursing his father in the last few months of his life. I found this really difficult to like. The father seemed like a really unpleasant man in many respects and the tricky relationships he had with his nearest and dearest are quite painful to read and don't leave anyone in the stories coming out smelling of roses. It must be hard, when one of the pivotal relationships in your life is complicated by loving someone but not always liking them much and this discomfort oozes out of the book. I found myself thinking about all the things Mars-Jones must have chosen not to write as I was reading one uncomfortable scene after another.
March 3, 2018
Fantastic first 65 pages - well-written, very funny and very (U) English. His father's proud Welsh background aside, the latter description fits both father the judge, and son the writer. Of his "ham-fisted" piano playing: "I remember him inspecting the sheet music, when I was about thirteen, and asking politely what the marking 'pp' meant. 'It means very quietly indeed,' I explained. 'Fancy that,' he said neutrally, but I was slow to take the hint." Unfortunately it then gets lost in digressions and goes in narrative circles for the next 200 pages.
April 28, 2022
This is a beautiful book
Adam Mars-Jones portrays his father as such a complex character, perhaps as such a real character, that it's hard to quite establish a proper sense of him. He seems like some enormous gas giant, like Jupiter, a swirling mass of moving stuff with a very small core of fixed, certain stuff.
Hmmmm
That metaphor needs a bit of work...
The highlights for me were Adam's coming-out to his parents, and the touchingly described relationship with his lover who died of AIDs
Adam Mars-Jones portrays his father as such a complex character, perhaps as such a real character, that it's hard to quite establish a proper sense of him. He seems like some enormous gas giant, like Jupiter, a swirling mass of moving stuff with a very small core of fixed, certain stuff.
Hmmmm
That metaphor needs a bit of work...
The highlights for me were Adam's coming-out to his parents, and the touchingly described relationship with his lover who died of AIDs
January 16, 2022
An interesting memoir that peters out a bit but it is beautifully written for the most part. Some very good anecdotes and the curiosity of living at Gray's Inn. Reconciling his father to Adam's gayness is a large part of the book and winning his acceptance is ultimately an anticlimax and even disappointment.
June 22, 2018
WONDERFULLY written & very (darkly) funny
June 12, 2022
no biographies
Read
August 26, 2022painful- did laugh once.
March 20, 2024
Really enjoyable
November 25, 2024
Couldn’t finish this not for me
July 25, 2016
This is a book which feels like an uneasy mix of memoir, diary and biography. From the subtitle of ‘A Voyage Round My Father’ (borrowed from John Mortimer) and the back-cover blurb, it’s framed as the first, but there is a surprising amount of the other two as well. The author, Adam Mars-Jones, was the son of William Mars-Jones, who was a very highly regarded lawyer and judge; initially, the book begins with his final years, but it flits back and forth in time between the author’s childhood, the height of his father’s career, and the aftermath of his death.
The writing is generally good. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I’m not sure there’s any more to it than this. Unlike a novel, the style here is perhaps not intended to be the main attraction. Certainly the author knows how to turn a phrase: it’s always lightly charming in a very self-effacing, very English way. I’m familiar with the author only from his essays in the papers and journals like the LRB; here, the tone feels for the most part more relaxed, almost conversational. It’s often very funny. Still, when the only object of criticism is himself, he can be merciless.
It’s also intensely digressive. There are lengthy accounts of his father’s cases, anecdotes from family holidays, descriptions of beloved meals; granted, some of this is very interesting — and perhaps the book would be inadequate if it didn’t at least mention his father’s handling of obscenity trials and censorship — but there’s many odd little stories that serve no purpose beyond a sort of textual small-talk. Fore example, we probably don’t need to share in the author’s brief post-funeral frustration that the undertakers failed to provide his father with an identical casket to his mother. It feels like much the kind of thing you might have to listen to following a funeral in real life, nodding along to feign polite interest, while the person speaking continues to occupy the silence.
As a memoir, it is for the most part prideful and affectionate, which is odd because in many ways his father comes across as an intensely unlikeable man. At times the portrait almost resembles a parody of a high court judge: a fond curator of his own pre-formed opinions, hypocritical in his attitude towards morality, and absolutely convinced of his own rightness. His entire life seems to have been built around the enlarged sense of his own self-importance necessary for him to perform his professional role with authority. And he takes his work home with him: he belittles the achievements of his sons and his wife at every opportunity. He is permanently unapologetic, even when unambiguously in the wrong. He treats people awfully because he knows he is important enough to get away with it. Nobody and nothing is permitted to dent or scratch his prestige. Put simply, he seems to be every patriarchal nightmare made flesh; it is only fortunate that he is followed through life by an assortment of people who are patient and loving (or paid) enough to make his domestic arrangements bearable.
If I have described this man as something of a monster, perhaps that’s only because the book itself approaches him with what almost feels like a surfeit of empathy. It dwells at length on those cases which demonstrate a progressive and liberal attitude, like the notorious ABC trial and the prosecution of the police for assaulting a black couple. And even when it touches on the negative aspects, it does so with a great deal of thoughtful hand-wringing. Great allowances are made; we are given to understand that whatever flaws he had were not really his at all: they belonged to his generation, and he couldn’t really be held responsible for them. I hardly feel qualified to judge whether this is ‘fair’ or not, but perhaps it would be unreasonable to expect anything else from a son’s memoir of his father. Still, there were plenty of times reading this when I wished the author would express something approaching anger or resentment towards the way he was treated. But perhaps that’s only a manifestation of the anger I was feeling on his behalf.
The one thing that ultimately drives a wedge between the author and his father is the older man’s homophobia. William’s belief that gay relationships are not only unnatural but a form of abuse persists to the end of his life. There is a certain begrudging acceptance of his son’s various partners introduced over the years, but they are never recognised with anything like the status afforded to a heterosexual partner. If there is a central tragedy at the heart of this book, I suppose it is this one, yet it takes the author over 200 pages of skirting around the issue to finally confront the heart of the matter. But when he gets there, it is beautiful, and rather moving. It’s there only that the book is no longer tainted by the urge to be equivocal, and the long shadow of the great man shrinks in the bright vision of the author’s expression.
The writing is generally good. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I’m not sure there’s any more to it than this. Unlike a novel, the style here is perhaps not intended to be the main attraction. Certainly the author knows how to turn a phrase: it’s always lightly charming in a very self-effacing, very English way. I’m familiar with the author only from his essays in the papers and journals like the LRB; here, the tone feels for the most part more relaxed, almost conversational. It’s often very funny. Still, when the only object of criticism is himself, he can be merciless.
It’s also intensely digressive. There are lengthy accounts of his father’s cases, anecdotes from family holidays, descriptions of beloved meals; granted, some of this is very interesting — and perhaps the book would be inadequate if it didn’t at least mention his father’s handling of obscenity trials and censorship — but there’s many odd little stories that serve no purpose beyond a sort of textual small-talk. Fore example, we probably don’t need to share in the author’s brief post-funeral frustration that the undertakers failed to provide his father with an identical casket to his mother. It feels like much the kind of thing you might have to listen to following a funeral in real life, nodding along to feign polite interest, while the person speaking continues to occupy the silence.
As a memoir, it is for the most part prideful and affectionate, which is odd because in many ways his father comes across as an intensely unlikeable man. At times the portrait almost resembles a parody of a high court judge: a fond curator of his own pre-formed opinions, hypocritical in his attitude towards morality, and absolutely convinced of his own rightness. His entire life seems to have been built around the enlarged sense of his own self-importance necessary for him to perform his professional role with authority. And he takes his work home with him: he belittles the achievements of his sons and his wife at every opportunity. He is permanently unapologetic, even when unambiguously in the wrong. He treats people awfully because he knows he is important enough to get away with it. Nobody and nothing is permitted to dent or scratch his prestige. Put simply, he seems to be every patriarchal nightmare made flesh; it is only fortunate that he is followed through life by an assortment of people who are patient and loving (or paid) enough to make his domestic arrangements bearable.
If I have described this man as something of a monster, perhaps that’s only because the book itself approaches him with what almost feels like a surfeit of empathy. It dwells at length on those cases which demonstrate a progressive and liberal attitude, like the notorious ABC trial and the prosecution of the police for assaulting a black couple. And even when it touches on the negative aspects, it does so with a great deal of thoughtful hand-wringing. Great allowances are made; we are given to understand that whatever flaws he had were not really his at all: they belonged to his generation, and he couldn’t really be held responsible for them. I hardly feel qualified to judge whether this is ‘fair’ or not, but perhaps it would be unreasonable to expect anything else from a son’s memoir of his father. Still, there were plenty of times reading this when I wished the author would express something approaching anger or resentment towards the way he was treated. But perhaps that’s only a manifestation of the anger I was feeling on his behalf.
The one thing that ultimately drives a wedge between the author and his father is the older man’s homophobia. William’s belief that gay relationships are not only unnatural but a form of abuse persists to the end of his life. There is a certain begrudging acceptance of his son’s various partners introduced over the years, but they are never recognised with anything like the status afforded to a heterosexual partner. If there is a central tragedy at the heart of this book, I suppose it is this one, yet it takes the author over 200 pages of skirting around the issue to finally confront the heart of the matter. But when he gets there, it is beautiful, and rather moving. It’s there only that the book is no longer tainted by the urge to be equivocal, and the long shadow of the great man shrinks in the bright vision of the author’s expression.
June 27, 2016
A great rambling journey through the life of the author. The central premise is meant to be the relationship between the author and his father, with a challenge being the author's homosexuality and his father being a rampant homophobe. In reality, this forms only one thread in a series of stories and themes which flow through the book. It is at times beautifully written, insightful, (such as his discussion of relationships on page 215) and occasionally very funny (see page 224-225 for an an example).
One problem I found was that for all its strengths, I did often not find the characters or the story that interesting. If you are going to take readers on a rambling journey it needs to be engaging. The contents did not always meet this need.
Another was to do with structure, which may well say more about me than the book, but it was something I found quite irritating. The book starts with a sentence on page 1 and ends with a sentence on page 274. In between there are no chapters, no breaks - no signal or sign of where you can stop, just paragraph after paragraph. The author also sometimes rambles off topic and then rambles back onto it a few paragraphs later. These two aspects conspire to make it difficult to find a place to stop reading. I rarely sit down and read a 274 page book in one go. It is like one of those huge chapters in Proust - only longer! I've always thought a book was about content and writing. I have learnt, from my frustration, how important structure is too!
One problem I found was that for all its strengths, I did often not find the characters or the story that interesting. If you are going to take readers on a rambling journey it needs to be engaging. The contents did not always meet this need.
Another was to do with structure, which may well say more about me than the book, but it was something I found quite irritating. The book starts with a sentence on page 1 and ends with a sentence on page 274. In between there are no chapters, no breaks - no signal or sign of where you can stop, just paragraph after paragraph. The author also sometimes rambles off topic and then rambles back onto it a few paragraphs later. These two aspects conspire to make it difficult to find a place to stop reading. I rarely sit down and read a 274 page book in one go. It is like one of those huge chapters in Proust - only longer! I've always thought a book was about content and writing. I have learnt, from my frustration, how important structure is too!
June 7, 2016
A book to be read in one sitting if you have the time. It's an extended meditation on the son's relationship with his father where the son is gay and the father is a homophobe. When the father is also a judge and the son a successful writer the book becomes a fascinating and sometimes funny account of negotiated positions, misunderstandings, huge resentments and so on. Ultimately the son cares for the father through his last years with dementia. Adam Mars-Jones writes an exceedingly clever turn of phrase and is unafraid of poking fun at himself as well as his father. There are no chapters or other natural breaks for the reader and it feels like something has been "got off the chest" in one long purge.
Very enjoyable.
Very enjoyable.
June 18, 2016
Although completely mesmerised by this book, loving the writing, and having many moments of little shocks of recognition at the depiction of minute family politics, I have a strong opinion that the experience of reading this book would be better if there were chapters and some kind of topic separators, and if the anecdotes and understandings and theories related were arranged in the traditional manner for biography: chronologically. I feel that I have been made to hurry through this book, feeling as comfortable as an unfit jogger, metaphorically gasping for breath, hardly able to consider one careful minutely observed evaluation before it is shouldered out of the way by what may be an aside, or an elaboration. I think I would enjoy a more leisured, less entangled reading.
March 22, 2016
Fascinating insights and erudite commentary of the author's family life and upbringing in Gray's Inn London. Fluent, assured and ultimately poignant account of things an extraordinarily gifted man holds dear. Studded with dry wit. Touching on the legal world, social history, homosexuality, family foibles and parental influence this book, written by a product of Westminster school and my old Cambridge college, Trinity Hall, is a most enjoyable read.
September 29, 2015
I love Adam Mars-Jones' sense of humour, but this is a book for readers who are on the same wavelength as the author. Some of the comments and turns of phrase made me laugh out loud, but the book tended to ramble.
June 12, 2016
Witty, camp, warm about a difficult father.
April 7, 2017
Bitter sweet memoir of a formidable, difficult man reduced by dementia to almost complete dependence on the son he had despised because of his homosexuality. There is an imperfect reconciliation on both parts before he dies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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