Ben Wildsmith’s memoir holds adoption at its centre. It speaks of it as a defining fact of his life, reverberating through every chapter. Raised in Birmingham, Ben received a place to study at the sought-after King Edward’s School, but was emotionally destabilised by a slowly unravelling home life.
It was his grandfather, raised in Rhondda, that planted a seed of other possibilities: a community, belonging and warmth that stood in contrast with English suburbia. Whose Song To Sing? becomes a series of crossroads: music or security, drift or stability, numbness or feeling. Wildsmith writes with intelligence and disarming humour about work, addiction, masculinity, and the ways men learn to speak to each other through football, beer, and shared rituals.
Episodic and vivid, the memoir moves fluidly between Birmingham, Stourbridge, Australia, and finally Wales, where he settles. Wales is so beautiful in this book, and as a person who settled here myself (for transparency, my account of this was also published last year by Calon – though Ben and I have never met or spoken!) I’m fascinated by the country’s portraiture as seen by other writers; in this instance, I often found myself nodding along. Wildsmith is a master of longing and self-integration, and often very funny.