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|title=Semi-Detached

|author=Griff Rhys Jones

|buy=Maybe

|borrow=Maybe

|pages=336

|publisher=Penguin Books Ltd

|isbn=978-0141012872

}}

At either end of this childhood memoir, Griff Rhys Jones's father is in bed. At the beginning he is the reassuring hulk whose ponderous breathing fascinates the infant Jones. By the last page he is on his deathbed, and his laboured breaths are his last.

I often felt similarly disconnected from proceedings. This wasn't generally due to deficiencies in the writing, although odd sentences were plain inexplicable. Also, a few self-consciously 'purple' passages escaped the editor's red pen ("At night the blank coastal strip simmers under a Lucozade dawn." runs one such example). No, it was the sense of déjà vu that unsettled me most.

Sincere and occasionally amusing as Jones's story is, it rarely justifies its existence beyond the the author's need for catharsis and closure. Yes, he is appropriately embarrassed at his precocious theatrical pretensions, and candidly moving about his caddish treatment of girlfriends. I identified with his hatred of sport and of organised religion, and with his contempt for domestic ritual. He even impressed me with the way he sprinkled architectural jargon around the text.

But in the end ''Semi-Detached'' lacked the exceptional story or insight to lift it above other examples of the genre. Like so many premature partial autobiographies, it stops just before fame intervenes - when it could have become more than another competent plod through childhood and adolescence.

If you enjoy showbusiness or theatrical memoirs of a slightly earlier generation, I'd recommend Alan Bennett's [[Untold Stories]], or [[The Year of the Jouncer]] by Simon Gray.

{{amazontext|amazon=0141012870}}

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|name=Magda

|verb=said

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