num_pages: 304
description: A mother who invented her past a father who was often absent a son who wondered if this could really be his family.Richard Glover's favourite dinner party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?'. It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher a Tolkien devotee nudist and stuffed-toy collector. There was his father a distant alcoholic who ran through a gamut of wives yachts and failed dreams. And there was Richard himself a confused teenager vulnerable to strange men trying to find a family he could belong to. As he eventually accepted the only way to make sense of the present was to go back to the past - but beware of what you might find there. Truth can leave wounds - even if they are only flesh wounds.Part poignant family memoir part rollicking venture into a 1970s Australia this is a book for anyone who's wondered if their family is the oddest one on the planet. The answer: 'No'. There is always something stranger out there.'Sad funny revealing optimistic and hopeful.' Jeanette Winterson
language: English
title: Flesh Wounds
publisher: ABC Books