‘I always spoke for my little brother when we were kids. This book is another chance for me to give him a voice’
John Niven on memoir turning spotlight on suicide after sibling took his own life
As the older sibling by two years, John Niven often spoke for his brother Gary when they were children.
Fifty years on, John finds himself doing so again, this time in a new book written more than a decade after Gary committed suicide.
O Brother, the first non-fiction book by best-selling novelist John, is a memoir about an ordinary, happy, working-class family from Irvine in Ayrshire. Tender yet unflinching, hilarious but heartbreaking, it attempts to analyse the moments which led Gary to take his own life, aged just 42, in 2010.
“I was talking to my friend, the author Cat Moran, and telling her whenever anyone asked Gary a question, I would jump in and answer before he could,” John said. “She smiled and said, ‘You’re still doing it now’, and I realised I am – that’s what this book is, me speaking for him again.”
The book is a dual memoir, telling the stories of John and Gary as two joined-at-the-hip children and the separate journeys they embarked on as adolescence and adult life beckoned.
It is also a snapshot of life in the 1970s and ‘80s, of childhood adventures, the joy of discovering music, and of how individuals react to the setbacks grown-up life hands out.
While John moved to London to pursue a career in the music industry before turning to writing, Gary remained in Irvine and drifted, finding himself in tow with the wrong people and eventually spending time in jail for drug offences.
“As I was doing the research, I realised how our lives had intertwined so perfectly as a narrative – when he was in the happiest period of his life, it coincided with me at my lowest ebb, and vice versa,” John continued.
“In the early noughties, he was out of prison and seemed to turn his life around – he got engaged, bought a house, had regular work and all seemed good. That coincided with me leaving the music industry to try to write the book that became Kill Your Friends. I thought it would take me a year or two but it took five. By the end I was completely broke and I’d burned all my bridges. If it hadn’t worked, it would have been scary to contemplate where I went from there.
“I always knew this book would be about the two of us. As a writer, you want something unique to you but also universal, and it struck me that Gary’s story, while specific to us, was universal in terms of most families having a black sheep, and those families being troubled by the question of how the black sheep acquired its colouring. The book became an attempt to answer that.
“In the crassest shorthand, it’s the good son and the wayward son – the subject of a thousand Hollywood movies and a Bruce Springsteen song, but ours was a unique west coast version, and I felt if I could tell it honestly it would have a resonance with people.”
Early reviews suggest John has succeeded. Ian Rankin described it “as moving, scalding, funny and harrowing as any memoir I’ve ever read”, while pop star Will Young, who also lost his brother to suicide, called it “heartbreaking and heartwarming”.
Dad-of-four John describes his brother as naturally funny, but not a natural hardman.
He said: “He was fearless and wanted to be noticed by other guys and would do anything. That’s dangerous enough as a teenager, but when you’re in your 30s it can lead to some scary places.”
Looking back, John can see the warning signs that Gary was in a bad place and regrets not being aware. He believes the issue of male suicide, while still at epidemic levels, is more widely spoken about now than it was at the time of Gary’s passing, and hopes the book can go some way to pushing the conversation further forward.
He said: “In the book, I say I was like the captain of the Titanic, looking out at a nice, calm night thinking everything was fine, when the warning signs were lit up right across the board. My brother was at the peak age of early 40s, single, living alone, unemployed, problems with drugs and alcohol, and financial worries. Every single warning light was on and I didn’t look hard enough. If I knew then what I know now, it might have been different.
“While it’s still an epidemic, there have been decent strides made since my brother died in bringing the subject more to the surface.
“Organisations like Mind and Calm
have become more visible, and The Samaritans had its Men On The Ropes campaign.
“I was never going to write a self-help book – that’s not within me – but if telling the story in the way that I have can help other people with similar experiences, then that’s great.”
John and Gary’s younger sister, Linda, has read the book but their mum, Jeanette, will not. He said: “My mum is my biggest fan and has ready every one of my books, but she still finds it all very raw, and while there are things in the book she would find tender and beautiful, there are also things she would find very difficult to read about.”
Writing the book also allowed John to feel closer to Gary again. He added: “As a writer, you’re getting to commune with the person as you do this, and that has quite a therapeutic effect.
“Suicide is like a Chernobyl of the soul – it sets off an endless chain reaction of questions.
“I realised that you have to make peace with the fact those questions are always going to be there.”