“Finding Arthur Whittle” by Helen Aitchison

Just like other books by this author, this one gave me plenty of food for thought. From the very first book that I read – “The Dinner Club” is among my all-time favourite reads – I appreciated Helen Aitchison’s talent for depicting her characters’ everyday lives in a way that makes me feel a part of their inner circle. Reading about their struggles and joys, I am always in the room with them, sitting across the table, sipping a cuppa. “Finding Arthur Whittle” proved to be no exception. For all three hundred-plus pages, I lived Harry Macbeth’s – ‘like the play!’ – life together with him, basking in the love of his family, meeting new people and – looking for Arthur Whittle.

On the day of the greatest loss, Harry receives what can be considered a precious gift. Instead, he treats it like a slap that has sent him flying backwards and landing painfully on his bum. Right before his mother takes her last breath on a hospital bed, Harry learns about the secret she has been keeping all his life. A man whom he considered his dad isn’t his biological father.

He should have been consumed by grief, but it’s rage that he walks around wrapped in most of the time. I must admit that this is what I found the most interesting in this story. Try as I might, I couldn’t relate to Harry’s emotional turmoil. He treated the situation as if it was solely about him, while, in my view, it was more about his mother. As I read on, I started to understand where Harry’s egocentrism stemmed from. And what is more fascinating, Harry himself began learning new things about himself and leaning towards the opinion that he was being unfair to his late mother.

I found Harry’s warm relationship with his wife Eleanor a highlight of the book. The author managed to portray the loving husband and wife, who, after decades of marriage, grow closer rather than apart, beautifully. Unlike so many stories that concentrate on showing how two people, once passionately in love, gradually lose everything that connected them, in “Finding Arthur Whittle” the reader is treated to a different kind of scenario. A long life together, with the shared moments of happiness and sorrow, hardships and success, isn’t a myth borne out of the wedding vow, which, sadly, a lot of people nowadays consider unrealistic. It might indeed be rare, like something truly valuable. But unrealistic it is not.

While Harry wallows in self-pity, torturing himself with reflections about who he really is, he also decides to find his biological father. And from there begins a multi-layered journey. Physically, he travels to Scotland, but even when he doesn’t leave his hometown, he is also taken on an emotional rollercoaster. The search for a man whom he had no idea he had to look for leads Harry to meet people whom he would have never otherwise met. And they teach him important lessons, which he wouldn’t otherwise have thought about learning.

The relationship between Harry and the young Leon is endearing and masterfully portrayed, yet to me, the best thing about it was seeing how Harry gradually began looking at his life through the prism of Leon’s.

I loved how the story titled “Finding Arthur Whittle” turned out to be so much more than one man’s search for his roots. Harry’s encounters with his might-be dads were interesting to read about, and the culmination of his journey did play Beethoven’s 5th Symphony on my heart’s strings. However, it is the broader canvas, dotted with the multitude of hues of human nature, that made me love this book. Bravo, Ms Aitchison! You did it again. You have painted a startlingly vivid portrait of the most exciting model – our life.