A Full House – But Empty – Angus Munro
This is the first autobiography that I have been asked to review. I will confess, biographies don’t appear within my preferred genres although many of the ones I have read I have enjoyed very much. The beauty of the autobiography is that the life that is being recounted is very personal and infused with meaning that only the author could have known or deduced. I don’t always relate to characters in fictional or even biographical works, but when something is related from personal experience, you can’t help but take an interest.
Angus Munro’s autobiography is a fascinating account of the author’s life. The balance of the book is towards his adult life, although he states that the events of his childhood affected him deeply, as I am sure they do everyone, and it was because of them that his life turned out how it did. Interestingly enough though, despite what at first seemed a very difficult childhood, Munro went on to an exceptionally successful career, first in the oil industry and then in hospital administration. Judging by the amount of admiration that followed him from almost everyone he came across, he seems to be one of those strong and fortunate people who manage to put their past behind them and live a happy, successful life regardless.
The title of the book came from the fact that the young Angus has grown up in a single parent family after his mother and father separated when he was three. He, his father and two sisters coped throughout the Depression era, but soon after his father’s generosity and need to be around people meant that most evenings, the house was filled with guests, visitors and friends all playing poker and enjoying themselves. Angus resented the fact that he had to clean up every morning as well as share his house with a constant stream of strangers. He also was deeply affected by a false accusation of theft when he was at school which ultimately led him to drop out. These two things were to affect him for the rest of his life.
I know how something apparently innocuous to an outsider can have such a profound effect on the way one things. The tragedy of this story is that despite achieving career success to levels that many people could only dream of, Munro labels himself the ‘grade school dropout’ throughout his book. I found that incredibly sad. I have known people with PhD’s who never achieved what Angus Munro achieved, and I have known people who never finished school who went on to be successful entrepreneurs and business people. Formal education is far from everything and it is tragic that this one thing was to cloud the thinking of the author throughout his life. Futhermore, it seemed sad that the author felt so profoundly affected by his homelife as an early teenager. The strange thing is, although this is what apparently the book was about, in reality it only rates a relatively insigificant mention in comparison with his experiences in his career and later life. I took that to mean that as the author began to write, he soon realised that what he had was a very positive, successful life and that he had managed to do all that without dwelling on his childhood. So many people cannot do that, and still find themselves in their old age cursing what happened to them as a child and remaining oblivious to the fact that they have wasted their whole life in resentment over the past.
The book is written well with good use of language although on occasion some of the terms felt a little stiff and artificial. Similarly, the dialogue did not ring true (I am not sure how comfortable I would be having a conversation with someone where I said their name every single time I spoke and they said mine every single time they spoke – personally I would find that a bit confrontational?). Nevertheless, this is written from memory and therefore the conversation which the author included in the book was clearly not verbatim from when the incident happened so I forgave the poetic licence. The only difficulty was that it made the story feel less warm and more formal than maybe it should have.
I did find many of the stories a little disjointed – the autobiography read as a series of only loosely related anecdotes rather than a flowing story. I didn’t mind though – in many ways it reminded me of A.B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life which I read earlier this year. Facey saw his whole life as a fortunate and positive one, despite his very difficult childhood, and irrespective of the references to being a dropout and the apparent insecurity which comes across in this book, I firmly believe that the author also sees his life as a fortunate and positive one.
This was a fascinating journey through the life of an ordinary man who has experienced the kind of life millions of others have experienced, but has seized it and run with it in his own personal way. I have so much admiration for what he achieved, and as much admiration in his commitment to write it down. It was done very well and resulted in a really interesting and well written book.
ISBN: 978-0-595-43719-1
Publisher: iUniverse (self-published)
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 16 July 2009
Pages: 249
