Carrying the Elephant

Book excerpt: dear joe, your wild noisy huge brother is dead. i couldn't do what my parents did: bring two boys, four years apart, through the maze in 72 prose-poems of extraordinary power and vividness, Michael Rosen tells the story of a life: his left-wing Jewish upbringing, with baffling childhood trips to Trafalgar Square, eastern Europe and hospital, followed by trainee days at the BBC under the watchful eyes of Mi5, breakdown of a marriage, development of a new relationship, and the joy of a new baby. And, in a core series of pieces, the central calamity of his life: the sudden death from meningitis of his eighteen-year-old son. 'Rather you than me' said one of the neighbours on hearing the news - a remark that Rosen records, as he does much else to do with the death, with a surprised, painful honesty which constantly brings the reader up short. Unflinching, totally lacking in mawkishness and self-pity, Carrying the Elephant is a triumph of imagination and curiosity.