Fry is a very strange man (Moab Is My Washpot - Stephen Fry)

Name: Bryn Pearson

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Product:	Moab Is My Washpot - Stephen Fry
Date:	05/08/02 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: surprisingly honest

Disadvantages: stops when he hits 20

Having read the book, I still only have a vague idea of what on earth the title is going on about, but never mind. "Moab" is an autobiography, recounting the first 20 years or so of Stephen Fry's life. It's an interesting, alarmingly honest sort of book.

Stephen Fry was educated in prep schools (in Uley of all places, very close to where I used to live) and public school. It will not shock his fans to learn that he wasn't that good at fitting in to the rugger orrientated world of the public school, that he was always a bit of a pretentious oddball and that he knew he was gay from a fairly early age. Some details about his less pleasant youthfull exploits cast him in somthing of a different light, and his honesty in discussing the less appealing parts of his nature is surprising.

"Moab" offers some insight into the Fry family background, but mostly concentrates on Stephen's early expereinces, with the odd dash of more modern references. There's a few photos on the middle (not in glorious technicolour I might add.)and a fair dash of humour along the way - as you would expect. It was a more touching piece than I had anticipated.

Anyone who has read Fry's first novel, "The Liar" will probably be curious to find out how much of the book actually owes itself to Fry's real life. Turns out there's a fair amount, but I'm not going to spoil either text by telling you which bits crop up twice.

My only problem with this book is that it stops just before Fry headed off to Cambridge, thus depriving one and all of early annecdotes pertaining to Hugh Laurie, and all the stuff about his footlights days, which I would have thought would make very interesting reading. I can only hope that at some point he will go back and write another bit of autobiography.

Many autobiographies these days seem to be about young celebs who have done little of interest, and who have probably
roped in a ghostwriter. "Moab" is a pleasure to read because Fry has such a distinctive and amusing writing style. His life was both thoroughly typical and thoroughly original, as he is careful to point out. It isn't the nostalgic youth of Laurie Lee, it isn't wall to wall debauchery, it isn't the tale of a rising genius because Fry seems to have been determined to thwart himself continually. It is however a telling and endearing insight into a life, and it largely left me with the feeling that I wanted to know what happened next.

Summary: