DADLAND

"Carew’s memoir about her father follows a winding, extraordinary path through the thickets of dementia and the jungles of Burma – a thrilling, bloody, educative history of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (AKA the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) in the second world war combined ingeniously with a tender, moving, funny portrait of the author’s father."

“A very moving story, very mature, very visual book. A stand out, stand alone piece of work because it was so unusual. For me it had the magic ingredient: it had beautiful prose, beautiful, smooth, readable, accessible prose and it was utterly hilarious. The most unconventional biography I have ever read.”

"Keggie Carew’s Dadland … gripped from beginning to end."

"How lovely to discover a book that makes one seize friends by the lapels and implore them, 'Read this'... wonderful"

"Mixes intimate memoir, biography, history and detective story: this is a shape-shifting hybrid that meditates on the nature of time and identity… Keggie Carew deftly switches between different layers of the past and different tones… a vivid kaleidoscope"

"Compelling and moving from start to finish... Carew’s funny, fascinating and unflinching tribute to her father is a portrait of a complex man: not just a war hero but a flawed husband; not just a Jedburgh but her incorrigible and much-missed dad"

"OH, THIS BOOK. Beautiful and fierce and brave. Memory and war and family and loss and, well, wow."

"I was so absorbed and moved by Dadland I haven't been able to read anything else. It is beautifully written -- deft and funny and so tender -- but I have also come away knowing more about history, more about dementia, more about men, more about daughters, more about love, family, sheds, diaries, an inquisitive mind and peeing in plastic bottles. I loved it. I really did."

“A wonderful, haunting and beautifully written memoir unlike anything I have ever read ... I found myself laughing out loud at times and, at others, unable to hold back the tears.  It is a profoundly rewarding and life-affirming book of many layers and a deeply moving homage to that extraordinary generation who lived, loved and fought through the Second World War.”

“The best new book I have read this year.”

"Continually interesting and often moving... The fruits of her research into her father’s war and espionage contacts are fascinating, but the real success of the book is the understanding the author acquires of the waywardness of experience, and of the complexity of family relationships"

"Utterly remarkable, and beautifully evoked… Dadland is a completely riveting, deeply poignant “manhunt” for which I predict great things."

“The author captures the flavour of every scene she describes, from her great grandfather in Egypt cuckolded by the Prince of Wales, to her grandfather, a groom in Ireland, marrying a young widow from the big house, to her father’s three marriages featuring a glorious villain – The Stepmother.”

"Keggie turns spy on her father. She is on a “ghost hunt”… What she uncovers is an extraordinary gift for any memoirist… fascinating"

"A fascinating mix of military history and family memoir studded with photographs… It’s one woman’s attempt to put her father’s role in history on the page, at the same time as his own recollections of it diminish"

"As Dad was losing his past... I was trying to retrieve it," Keggie writes... With the publication of this original, moving book, she has succeeded"

“The facts are golden (cameos from fake SAS men, CIA directors, quasi-evil stepmothers) but from them she could not have made something more outstandingly good.”

“Beautiful, nostalgic, moving, shocking, swashbuckling, and simply unputdownable, this is the memoir we all want to write.”

"The effect of these various voices is a shifting, multi-layered and utterly absorbing narrative...  I can’t recommend it more strongly."

"A beautifully written, funny and tender ode to an adventurous, occasionally frustrating, man who lived life at full tilt"

"It's now commonplace to say that sad memoirs are ultimately redemptive, but Dadland is the real McCoy. It is a rich and stunning achievement, a feat of imagination that sews together many parallel true stories. Above all, it is a labour of shining daughterly love"

“Threaded with forgiveness and a fine comic glitter, this is no tragedy.”

"A fascinating mix of military history and family memoir studded with photographs… It’s one woman’s attempt to put her father’s role in history on the page, at the same time as his own recollections of it diminish"

“… this is no misery memoir: when the 85-year-old Carew falls down a flight of stairs, he goes automatically into a parachute roll, emerging unscathed to enjoy the incredulity of bystanders. And even after his death, one last, stranger-than-fiction episode remained: a fitting final twist to an extraordinary life, and a sui generis debut.”

“…. As Tom’s life falls apart memory by memory, Keggie is picking it up again and her storytelling is spell-binding.  Effortlessly readable, this is a delight combining laughter - and tears, yes, quite a few of those.”

“… The beauty and boldness of this memoir - piece together from pictures, letters, diaries, cuttings and military archives - is in its healing honesty about the complex, flawed character of Tom, and his daughter’s unbroken spirit in the aftermath of her father’s derring-do and deep family damage.”