KEY POINTS:
REMEMBER ME
Melvyn Bragg
Sceptre, $38.99
This is an ambitious and deeply personal novel from Melvyn Bragg, elder statesman of the British arts world and host of The South Bank Show.
Joseph Richardson wants to find a way to tell his daughter the story of how he fell in love with her mother, Natasha, a damaged and emotionally unavailable art student. Joseph, certain he can navigate a path through Natasha's pain, proposes. They marry and have a child, while Joseph becomes successful in ways not unlike Bragg himself. The couple move to London where they grow apart, trying analysis but never finding the answers they seek.
Bragg's first wife killed herself and he understandably never stopped feeling guilty. This is clearly the book that seeks to make sense of his late wife's suicide. Remember Me is moving, full of emotional insight but in the course of its 550 pages, you wish Bragg would cut to the chase. A shorter novel would probably have been better and stronger.
