This  autobiography could have easily, and forgivably, been filled with indulgent analyses of grief, loss and growing up. It opens with Boast’s father dying, quietly and in isolation. Having already lost his mother and only brother, twenty-four-year-old Boast finds himself absolutely alone. This family tragedy takes Boast on an excruciating journey, but it also leads him to discover a secret that his father had intended to keep: his father had another family before Will’s – a wife and two sons in England. And so the story begins.

Boast’s struggle to identify himself within the newly discovered parameters set by his late father is extraordinarily moving. Memories need to be adjusted and approaches to his ‘new’ family are full of tentative cravings. Boast’s unremitting style of writing allows the reader to be carried through his turmoil, and indeed his resilience. Boast already has an excellent reputation as a writer, and this, his own story, more than meets the expectations raised by earlier praise and is receiving applause from all over.

Reminiscent of Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father?, Epilogue is a coming of age story full of the anguish and the hope of letting go and beginning again.

Chris Gordon