A memoir about a tumultuous life, Filthy Beasts is focused mainly on the destructive force of the author’s alcoholic mother and his own journey of coming to terms with his sexuality. After a posh and privileged childhood, Kirkland and his two brothers move to Bermuda with their mother after their parents’ divorce. What follows is a portrait of a highly dysfunctional family and how Kirkland was personally scarred by it. ⁣
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The book is very well-written and bitingly honest. Parts are funny because the family is so aggressively sarcastic it’s hard not to laugh. It’s a very sad book, though, because of the wide-ranging misery that follows in the wake of the Hamill family, brought on almost entirely by the irresponsible and harmful choices of the parents. As a reader, you feel so much for Kirkland and the weight he carries in the face of scorn and diminution. I can’t call it an uplifting story. Most everyone touched by the chaos is left worse for the wear. Kirkland emerges, but the cost is very high. ⁣