Over his previous three books, critic Will Hodgkinson's shtick has been enjoyably warm enquiry into the mysteries of music: be that learning an instrument so that he can play his first gig (Guitar Man ), or attempting to understand the sound of the nation (The Ballad of Britain ). This time, however, he looks at himself, and a childhood "turned upside down" when his father (science journalist Neville Hodgkinson) had a life-changing brush with death and became a fully-fledged Brahma Kumari. Dressed entirely in white, he preached meditation and understanding to anyone who would listen, and the adolescent Hodgkinson went from playing conkers and air hockey with his dad to sitting uncomfortably in his front room as two dozen Yogis stared at a "red egg" in serene peace.
Hodgkinson tells this story with endearing but slightly detached bafflement probably because he was actually at boarding school for much of his teenage years. But though he was hardly going to write a misery memoir (Hodgkinson is far too polite and well turned out for that) the lack of rigour about how the conversion exploded his family unit is rather odd. The book ends up being little more than a series of well-told family anecdotes and snapshots of awkward encounters with girls, when there's actually a lot more meat or should we say dhal to a narrative Nick Hornby told rather better in How to Be Good .
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