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Quick Review A beautifully honest dive into heartbreaking memories that helped create an incredible talent in actor Alan Cummings.
Alan Cummings is a celebrated actor with exceptional range. Acting wasn’t just a calling, it was a means to an end, the way to survive being at home with his father. He revisits the childhood trauma that led to an acting career with painful sincerity in his memoir Not My Father’s Son.
Growing up in rural Scotland, Alan Cummings was different. He was not the son his father wanted. He was not like his older brother, but his brother did not inspire warmth or fatherly love either. He recalls the moments and memories that made him full of abuse, joy, fear, and affairs. With each heartstopping recollection, a vivid picture of the resilient man Cummings became solidifies in the reader’s mind. Adulthood meant escaping the house that held so many terrifying years and life to be proud of, but even in the face of freedom, Cummings’ past is a part of his present.
I have a love for memoires. Memory is fascinating, and what stays in one person’s mind as a defining moment in their lives tells a great deal about who they are and how they see themselves. Not every writer can delve into their emotional past with the same raw integrity Cummings does. He has an intense ability to capture his childhood fears and memories and desires for better within the page. There is bravery in the way he writes and tells the world, ‘This is who I am and who I came from, but I am more than this.’ As a grown woman dealing with the psychological violence of childhood, I could wholly identify with Cummings as I read, “It is a startling thing, the need to feel utterly believed.” Violence does not happen in a vacuum, but it is often recovered from in one. Having just one person who believes in the truth of your story is a powerful thing and the greatest gift you can give a survivor.
Trauma and violence is a fickle thing. Cummings is able to bring words to the effects of living in a home where violence is as much a family member as his mother, brother, and father, “I actually think the prolonged period of tension before landing his blows, as we were systematically inspected, chided, and humiliated, had a far worse effect than the actual hits.” The relationship between parent and child is so emotionally complex. Even in the face of violence and being the target of hatred, Cummings doesn’t shy away from the complexity of this relationship with his father and the need to be a good son in Not My Father’s Son, “My father continued to have affairs throughout my childhood, and they were not subtle or discreet.” “I understood that I had to collude, to protect my father, even though he didn’t deserve it.”
Not My Father’s Son is not just the story of Cummings’ relationship with his father, though it is devoted heavily to it. His mother was an integral part of the family and who he would become. For as much belittling as he experienced at the hands and words of his father, he also experienced true love and compassion from his mother, “She [mother] told me I was special and loved. And actually, having two such opposing messages, although confusing, was ultimately pretty healthy. My father told me I was worthless, my mother that I was precious. They couldn’t both be right, but they evened each other out and I began to make my own mind up, not just about myself but about everything that was going on around me.”
Cummings is sensational at creating an emotionally grounded and tangled picture of growing up. For every person who has experienced violence or trauma, it is a revelation. I did not live his life in any way, but I could find my own story within his truths. Not My Father’s Son is the story of one man overcoming and living with a childhood that could have ruined him. Through the pain and the violence, Cummings shows grace. One of the most touching and human moments can be found in the acknowledgments when he thanks his father, “Thank you, Alex Cumming, for siring me and ensuring I will have lots of source material. I forgive you.” It is a beautiful memoir.
Memorable Quotes
“It has not been pleasant as an adult to realize that dealing with my father’s violence was the beginning of my studies of acting.”
“Memory is so subjective. We all remember in a visceral, emotional way, and so even if we agree on the facts—what was said, what happened where and when—what we take away and store from a moment, what we feel about it, can vary radically.”
“For yes, being a woman, even one with a penis and for the purposes of drama, really made me feel that women have been coerced into a way of presenting themselves that is basically a form of bondage. Their shoes, their skirts, even their nails seem designed to stop them from being able to escape whilst at the same time drawing attention to their sexual and secondary sexual characteristics. And I think that has happened so that men feel they can ogle them and protect them in equal measure.”
bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna
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Title: Not My Father’s Son
Author: Alan Cumming
Publisher: Dey St. (William Morrow – HarperCollins)
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9780062225061
