All in the family
TO THE BOOKSHOP LIBRERIA IN SHOREDITCH, to celebrate the launch of Tracy King’s memoir Learning to Think. It’s a record of an extraordinary life — it opens with a scene of young Tracy being exorcised, after her perfectly reasonable trauma and grief following the sudden death of her father was mistaken for demonic possession. To the economic precarity of her upbringing was added emotional precarity: it’s a circumstance that would have sunk many.
But more importantly, it’s an extraordinary piece of writing. Partly because she grew up with so much uncertainty (and partly because her parents always encouraged her to be curious), Tracy became a sceptic in the highest sense: never settling for pat answers, always asking the difficult questions, even about her own life. Which…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2024