O Brother

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O Brother

By: John Niven

Narrated by: John Niven

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About this listen

John Niven’s little brother Gary was fearless, popular, stubborn, handsome, hilarious and sometimes terrifying. In 2010, after years of chaotic struggle against the world, he took his own life at the age of 42.

Hoping for the best while often witnessing the worst, John, his younger sister Linda and their mother, Jeanette, saw the darkest fears they had for Gary played out in drug deals, prison and bankruptcy. While his life spiralled downward and the love the Nivens’ shared was tested to its limit, John drifted into his own trouble in the music industry, a world where excess was often a marker of success.

Tracking the lives of two brothers in changing times – from illicit cans of lager in 70s sitting rooms to ecstasy in 90s raves – O Brother is a tender, affecting and often uproariously funny story. It is about the bonds of family and how we try to keep the finest of those we lose alive. It is about black sheep and what it takes to break the ties that bind. Fundamentally it is about how families survive suicide, ‘that last cry, from the saddest outpost.’

Grief & Loss

Parenting & Families

Personal Development

Funny

Witty

Heartfelt

Inspiring

Thought-Provoking

Emotionally Gripping

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Critic reviews

Oh my God, this book! O Brother feels like war-level reportage from the nuclear-blast that suicide inflicts on a family. [. . . ] The honesty is unflinching, the humour night-black, and yet the sheer energy and power of the writing means you can, as I did, inhale it in just two sittings [. . . ]. A book whose genuine importance is only equaled by its sheer, visceral, compulsive readability (CAITLIN MORAN)

Absurdly well-written, painfully funny and painfully painful (ADAM KAY)

Heartbreaking and heartwarming (WILL YOUNG)

Most relevant

A very funny, tender, sad, angry and honest account of loss and becoming, that rolls, swells, flows and beats like music. Its a heartbreaking account of two brothers in a family who, in the late 60s, have arrived into the middle classes with all the expectations and hope that comes with that. Johns little brother is ‘problem child’,with all the brilliant burning glory of the rebel, bearing all signs of mental health issues that will foster a terrible tragedy. We see him growing up in a time where issues like ADHD (my guess) is misunderstood and the language of child psychology does not exist especially for those hopeful parents with those class roots, Constantly told he is a ‘bad stick’ bearing the well meaning brunt of a frustrated father’s temper, the disappointment of his ever hopeful, heartbroken mother and a society not yet equipped to help, this bright flame is slowly extinguished. Niven the big brother, who’s faired better in the genes stakes, but who’s childhood is both overshadowed and outshone by his unpredictable, super cool, funny, younger brother gives a painfully, and hilariously honest confessional account of himself as the big brother allows himself to be estranged by his brother’s destructively punk attitude, which, in retrospect he realises, too late masks the darkest internal battle with mental health, in this confessional memoir he ponders the cost of his own self absorption, ambition and precarious struggles to become the unique, glorious and successful writer he is, whilst elsewhere the realities and vicissitudes of life, strained parental relationships, music and drug culture send his little brother to the darkest place, leaving behind a lifetime of myriad unanswered and agonising questions.
It’s a tragic story which like all good memories gives us a clue on how to live a better life.

Becoming John Niven