Losing Mum and Pup, Christopher Buckley
Losing Mum and Pup, Christopher Buckley
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Losing Mum and Pup
A Memoir

Author: Christopher Buckley

Narrator: Christopher Buckley

Unabridged: 6 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/06/2009


Synopsis

In twelve months between 2007 and 2008, Christopher Buckley coped with the passing of his father, William F. Buckley, the father of the modern conservative movement, and his mother, Patricia Taylor Buckley, one of New York's most glamorous and colorful socialites. He was their only child and their relationship was close and complicated. Writes Buckley: "They were not - with respect to every other set of loving, wonderful parents in the world - your typical mom and dad."

As Buckley tells the story of their final year together, he takes readers on a surprisingly entertaining tour through hospitals, funeral homes, and memorial services, capturing the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan. Buckley maintains his sense of humor by recalling the words of Oscar Wilde: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

Just as Calvin Trillin and Joan Didion gave readers solace and insight into the experience of losing a spouse, Christopher Buckley offers consolation, wit, and warmth to those coping with the death of a parent, while telling a unique personal story of life with legends.

About Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor, and memoirist. His books include Thank You for Smoking, The Judge Hunter, Make Russia Great Again, and The Relic Master. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nancy

Christopher Buckley was the only son of the Messiah of Conservatism, William F. Buckley, and his wife, the style icon and socialite Pat Buckley. When he lost these two larger-than-life characters within a year of each other, he felt compelled to pen this short memoir of that painful year. I confess......more

Goodreads review by Bill

Christopher Buckley's bittersweet memoir of his final year with his stylish mother and famously conservative father lends a human scale to a couple that so often appeared larger than life. Personally, I was never particularly enamoured of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s politics or even his books, despit......more

Goodreads review by Randee

William F. Buckley, Jr. is one of my heroes. There are few people that can talk as 'fancy' as Bill. I loved to listen to him speak. I also give him credit for approximately a quarter (if not more) of the vocabulary I command. (The other three quarters come from my love of reading from an early age;......more

Goodreads review by George

STILL LARGER THAN LIFE. “I looked at Mum and realized -- twang! -- that she was telling an untruth. A big untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so completely untrue, as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at -- h......more


Quotes

"One of the funniest writers in the English language."—Tom Wolfe

"One of the rarest political specimens-- the authentically comic writer."—Boston Globe

"An accomplished comic novelist and raucously funny political satirist."—Sunday Times of London

"The quinessential political novelist of our time."—Fortune