A stubend o a wiry black hair has started to sprout rom the middle

They' e resided in 39 towns in 33 states, li ing in rented accommodation while Gareth takes isiting pro essor roles at pro incial uni ersities, educating "America's unassuming and ordinary". It'll be one o our new secrets." The image o a teenage boy making a pact to preser e the decorum o a mother who's orgotten him and who would take another 10 years to die, made me cry.The original dedication page o In the Blood read " or my ather and my brother and in memory o my mother". Tragically, Andrew Motion's ather died be ore the book was published. A "stub-end o a wiry black hair has started to sprout rom the middle. Mum must ha e clipped that in the old days, or tweaked it out, and I ne er knew She must ha e hated it, and not wanted anyone to see I'll do it or her now, when we're alone together. It's in his blood.Days a ter the accident, he and his brother Kit are inally allowed to see their mother in hospital. His mother doesn't know him anymore, but searching her ace desperately or signs o recognition he notices the mole on her cheek.

Andrew Motion's description o her bruised ace, the sound o the oxygen tank, the smell o sweat and talc, is electri yingly intimate. It begins and ends with the terrible accident and both opening and closing chapters are written in the present tense. The death o his mother is the moment which not only ends his childhood, it circumscribes his li e It's his past, his present and his uture. Listening to a ragment o Beetho en, he captures the sensation brilliantly, describing it as "something to do with the breeze lipping o er the chestnut lea es outside my window, showing they were already brown underneath". or a man who appears so intro erted and secreti e, In the Blood is disarmingly rank. The bond with his mother is deep, made e en stronger by Motion's knee operations which kept him at home or months. "I didn't want to admit it, but there was always a wrinkle when dad came home. It was partly because he was tired, and hadn't shaken all the work-wasps out o his head.

And partly to do with the way that mum and I glued together while he was in London."Andrew Motion writes as the child he was, but when the child speaks there are intimations o the uture poet's power. They think that rioting rench students should be sent to prison and the Rolling Stones should join the army.Then Motion has a teenage epiphany It dawns on him that he needs a di erent kind o li e "Not so much bellowing. More thinking." But most shocking o all or his amily is his announcement that he won't be going hunting anymore, e en i it is meant to be "in the blood". or all his amily's panic about emotions, this is a passionate account o a man's lo e or his parents and or the countryside in which he grew up. "'You must ne er say "toilet"', mum went on; she was being so serious that it made my clothes eel tight 'Why not?' 'Because it's non-U,' she said.