{"id":364393,"date":"2026-08-03T00:12:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T00:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/review-the-wrong-son-by-neil-griffiths\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T00:12:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T00:12:26","slug":"review-the-wrong-son-by-neil-griffiths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=364393","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: \u2018The Wrong Son\u2019 by Neil Griffiths"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Many of us will be familiar with the opening refrain from Philip Larkin\u2019s \u2018This Be The Verse\u2019:<\/h2>\n

\u2018They f**k you up, your mum and dad.<\/em>
They may not mean to, but they do.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

In this insightful and often painful memoir, author Neil Griffiths explores how the very specific circumstances of his birth, upbringing and family dynamics convened to create specific damage to his psyche that only fully revealed itself with the death of his parents and which may never completely heal.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it about?<\/h3>\n

In this stark and fearless memoir, Neil Griffiths investigates the<\/span>\u00a0emotional inheritance passed down through silence and grief, and\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0lifelong consequences of being\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0child who should not have existed.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In 1963, a young husband loses his pregnant wife and eighteen-month-old\u00a0son<\/span>\u00a0in a car accident. Six months later, he meets a woman who abandons her own husband and child for him \u2014 a man who seems to her everything she has ever wanted. Within two years, a boy is born into this family of grief and guilt: into a house already filled with ghosts, where neither parent can see him clearly through what each has lost. His mother demands perfection. His father, meanwhile, decides early on that this child exists only because\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0first one died \u2014 and cannot forgive him for it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Moulded by his mother, rejected by his father, he is given no space in which to become himself. Throughout his life, no matter how much he tries to invent himself, he is driven by\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0fear that nothing real exists underneath. Fifty years on, after his parents\u2019 deaths, that fear begins to unmoor him. He turns to\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0work of psychoanalysts who were pioneers of early childhood psychology around\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0time he was born. Drawing on\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0insights of D.W. Winnicott and Jacques Lacan,\u00a0The Wrong Son<\/span>\u00a0traces a life shaped not only by loss and violence, but by psychic damage that may never fully be shaken off.<\/em><\/p>\n

With forensic clarity and unexpected humour,\u00a0The Wrong Son<\/span>\u00a0is a quietly devastating work: deeply human, psychologically attuned, and unafraid to stay with what cannot be resolved.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s it like?<\/h3>\n

Brutally honest without being self-pitying, this is a carefully painted portrait of a life lived without a sense of core self. It is only after his father\u2019s death that Griffiths realises how far he had set himself up in opposition to his father \u2013 a notion of selfhood that crumbles when his father no longer exists to define itself against.<\/p>\n

While adding depth to his personal insights by reflecting on key insights from childhood psychoanalysts, Griffiths also takes care to separate his experience of his father from the experiences of the wider world, creating a deeply complex portrait of a man who caused great damage to his son while enhancing the lives of many other people in his community.<\/p>\n

He is also able to reflect on his own foibles in a way that is often amusing, rather than self-flagellating, adding a necessary lightness to what is, in places, a deeply sad account of a wounded child who becomes, in certain aspects, the kind of parent he himself struggled to interact with.<\/p>\n

Final thoughts<\/h3>\n

From the thoughtful opening pages to the last questioning examination of whether his upbringing could ever have been different, \u2018The Wrong Son\u2019 is consistently a memoir that encourages the reader to empathise with all involved. I found that elements of Griffiths\u2019 experiences with dissociation reminded me of \u2018when nothing feels real\u2019 by Nathan Dunne, a non-fiction account of the journalist\u2019s experiences of depersonalisation (reviewed here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A powerful memoir that will doubtless encourage readers to reflect on their own relationships with their families and \u2013 perhaps \u2013 find it in their hearts to recognise the full complexity of family members as human beings in relation to their own experiences.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Wrong Son\u2019,
Neil Griffiths,
2026, Weatherglass books, paperback<\/h6>\n
Many thanks to the publisher and Anne Cater\u2019s Random Things Tours for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review and a spot on the blog tour.<\/h5>\n

Want to know more? Then why not follow the tour:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of us will be familiar with the opening refrain from Philip Larkin\u2019s \u2018This Be The Verse\u2019: \u2018They f**k you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to, but they do.\u2019 In this insightful and often painful memoir, author Neil Griffiths explores how the very specific circumstances of his birth, upbringing and family dynamics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":364394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[4115,3744,77068,5532,12695,19175,3813,3749,956,6773],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-364393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-blog-tours","tag-book-reviews","tag-griffiths","tag-memoir","tag-mental-health","tag-neil","tag-non-fiction","tag-review","tag-son","tag-wrong"],"yoast_head":"\nREVIEW: \u2018The Wrong Son\u2019 by Neil Griffiths - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Many of us will be familiar with the opening refrain from Philip Larkin's 'This Be The Verse': 'They f**k you up, your mum and dad. 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