Why does this elegant and amusing memoir of rural life hint at secrets in the author’s later life? And did his parents object to its revelations? Alyson Rudd meets our latest writer

This book is full of contradictions but, as it is a memoir, we can’t fault the plotting. We must cope, just as the author had to cope with his peculiar upbringing. As Eleanor Fitzsimons says in the star letter, we assume that today’s children watch too much television and play too many computer games, but spending his formative years on a farm with no TV or PlayStation did not save Clare from trouble with drugs and depression. Why?

I sensed a high degree of insecurity. There is a scene where his mother eats mushrooms she has picked and Horatio fears that they are poisonous. “If I start foaming at the mouth just pick up the phone and say my stupid mother’s eaten a toadstool,” she says, eating them defiantly as he watches for signs of imminent death. That sums her up – independent and adventurous but eccentric. The boy wants her to calm down and be more predictable.

This is a memoir that, on the face of it, is descriptive not confessional. But it becomes extremely personal and you feel, on occasion, that you should not really be there. It is, however, worth the discomfort.

Star letter

This wonderful book becomes achingly poignant when we learn of the troubles that Horatio Clare experienced later. Despite the many deprivations and the departure of his father, these days were perhaps the happiest and most straightforward of his life. At times his sentiments as he struggles to be fair to both parents and understand the reasons for their break-up are so raw that we feel we are intruding on a very personal struggle.

Yet it is a privilege to do so. Life on the farm is not romanticised and Jenny’s conviction that it is the best possible life for her family is admirable, if uncompromising. While the book may make us question the overimportance of PlayStation in children’s lives, idealised country living did not keep Clare from drugs and depression.

If this book emerged from a therapeutic exercise to exorcise his demons, it is all the richer for that.

Eleanor Fitzsimons, Dublin

April 13, 2007

ONE SENTENCE IN HORATIO CLARE’S memoir stands out starkly and vividly. It is at odds with the book’s tone and is something that, if you are reading Running for the Hills with a book group, you will definitely want to discuss. I met Clare and was able to ask him what on earth he meant.

“Among the many reasons I had for beginning [the book],” he writes, “was the hope that I would uncover clues to my own predicament, not only emotionally and psychologically, but in relation to authority and conformity.” This comes about halfway through and is the only time that Clare mentions the present day. Otherwise the memoir is all about his life on a remote farm in Wales, seen through the eyes of a child.

It is a gentle work, elegantly written. Delicious slices of eccentric farm life are served up with humour and some understandable incredulity. But Clare has let slip that he grew up to have problems without anywhere telling us what they might be. There is a reason. He has written a sequel — about life after the farm, his dependence on drugs and his lack of a grip on reality or how to make a living.

“I didn’t have a clue who I was in terms of what I was supposed to be doing. I had bad years, took too many drugs which had all sorts of consequences. The next book — Truant: Notes from the Slippery Slope — is about drug abuse and manic depression. I had grown up with one narrative, which was that my father had left. What I learnt in writing the book was different. Yes, he left, but my mother didn’t compromise. There was no fault at all. After reading the book many of my friends thought that he had been terribly misserved by the story that I grew up with and they wanted to meet him. He was a mysterious figure to me.

“I wrote the first line in 2000 and it came easily, really easily so I thought ‘I can be a writer then’, dropped it and started writing a novel, a really long, bad novel.”

But his agent believed in him and told him to put together a nonfiction proposal, the basis for Running for the Hills. He quit drugs, found a job at the BBC as a researcher and became interested in writing about his childhood. The book did help his “predicament”.

“I always wanted to be a writer, so it solved that problem.” But he does not claim that it was a complete form of therapy; it simply enabled him to piece together why his parents had split up and to discover a much more palatable truth about their relationship.

I was surprised his parents were still alive. The book discusses things about their relationship that most parents would not expect their offspring to need — or want — to know. “It wasn’t supposed to be for anyone else. I thought that I would write down for my own benefit what they had told me. Then the book became an open letter to them: ‘This is how I understand it, but let me know if I’m wrong’.

“Then it became an effort to understand. As far as their privacy was concerned, I made a decision not to write down anything that I didn’t know already. There is nothing in the book that I found out about later or didn’t know at the time. I tried to respect their privacy. My father’s first reaction was that he felt very exposed; he’s a very private man. But my mother and he had a chat and she said that it was fair and forgiving. And their friends said that it was done with huge love. My father ended up feeling proud of the book, although he would never say that I got it entirely right.”

Running for the Hills is not just a self-help manual: “The other motivation was that I thought that what we had been through was wonderful — a gift. The mountain was worth sharing. What my mother did was, in lots of ways, noble.”

Testament to this is that Clare now lives on the coast of Pembrokeshire. “I love Wales,” he says. I am just a little surprised by that. His book is fascinating but is not an obvious advert for how to leave the rat race successfully. John Murray, £7.99, 288pp

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The key questions

Which incidents during life on the farm stand out — and is there enough excitement in the book?

Do you feel that Horatio Clare need to bring more than a child’s interpretation to the events of his early life?

Is Jenny living in dreamland or does she come across as a mother with strong views on what is good for her children?

Does Wales feel a less or a more appealing place after reading this memoir?

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