'Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling' by Lily Dunn
(pubished by Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2022)
As a writer, Lily Dunn or Dr Dunn – she has a PhD in creative writing – has declared herself now interested in literary memoir, and as a result, has produced this very curious and personal piece of written work. Her journalistic background, being put to good use here, is effective in her dissecting of the complexities of a family which eschews the idea of normalcy. It is, after all her own family, and her father within it which she has put upon the literary dissection table. She does hail from a mother who was herself a biographer, and a father, the subject and object of her book, who was a literary publishing juggernaut.
This is a highly personal narrative that delves deeper than any of her family may have found comfortable – it makes the story profoundly fascinating. This is only her second published book and deals with her father's various addictions – sex, prescription drugs and alcohol – and membership of a cult leading to his sad death from addiction.
Awarded the Book of the Year for 2022, by no less than both
The Guardian and
The Spectator, it could be argued that its greatest achievement would be in political unanimity through literature at a time when nobody else could imagine it. But it does cover topics which have a propensity to unite those who have opposing party political views.
It describes how Lily Dunn was only six when her father decided to leave the family home, travel to India, and find himself with the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Leaving two children, Dunn and her brother, as well as a wife behind, her father settled in a cult and found a girlfriend. You can feel the outrage on her pages when his plan to move his girlfriend into the family home are scuppered by equal and more understandable outrage – even perplexity – in opposition. His belief that it would allow them all to find enlightenment together is explained and explored with knowledge looking at the naivety of a man chasing dreams. By the time we get to this part of the narrative, it could be expected that what would follow is predictable.
Only some of it is.
What follows is a relationship between father and daughter where the daughter chases the drug-addled dad as his illness manifests itself in new relationships, the setting up of communes in Italy and the US, his descent into debt and eventually being thrown out of America. It is a journey shared with her father where only she was aware that they were on some kind of journey.
Parenthood can be a difficult landscape, add in alcohol, drugs and delusion, and parenthood can often switch from the elder being the parent, to the child assuming the role. Here Dunn comes out as a heroic figure, a loving and devoted daughter, but who is still missing the seminal relationship of endorsement carved from the man who should, but could not, show her sufficient love. It is a tragedy, but one marked by the selfless daughter doing all she can in hope, while her father courts one disaster after another.
The abiding emotion on each page is love; not an unconditional one, but love, nonetheless.
My own response was slightly less enthusiastic than some of the endorsements on the cover which claimed that it was unputdownable. As a father and a recovering alcoholic, myself, there are tragic elements in any story of a breakdown between father and daughter through drink and drugs which resonate. But the most affecting is not about the addictions, per se.
The most visceral of effects is in the chapter called
The Scam. Her dad books into the Connaught Hotel in London as he is about to inherit millions from a deceased relative. He has paid the admin and legal fees of £50,000 to ensure his benefactors can make it to London to pass over the cash. They never come, but for a while the calumny perpetrated upon her father and Dunn herself is laid bare. He is enthusiastic, buoyant and back to his 'old self'. She is aware, downbeat and appalled at the whole mess. I read those pages through my fingers.
This is a personal piece of humble exposition which comes with a degree of honesty worth celebrating. The terrible truth of her upbringing may for some seem cathartic, but it is also, for me, a warning. Those that seek enlightenment can often betray their own self-delusion, self-fascination and destroy the self of others in the process.
I was totally exhausted at the end of the book; such was its demands upon my emotional engagement. I am sure that others would also find it challenging. It's not a book to be enjoyed, but it is also not a book to be endured.
Dunn proves herself a very capable guide, and it has to be said she never once casts herself as a heroic figure, through a morass of emotional baggage. The greatest irony is that she found more out about them both and life than seeking enlightenment from a guru ever did; if only her father had been alive to read this first, before abandoning his family.
Donald C Stewart is a broadcaster, reviewer, educator and writer based in the West Coast of Scotland, currently to be found through his Twitter account @CommuneArts
