this book, which is partly a family history and partly a detective novel, with extraordinary revelations and an impressive cast of characters dotted through the narrative.

Also on the shelves is a photograph of Georgie at about eight years old. She does look haunted. None of the gaiety, confidence, or spontaneity of childhood is apparent. Instead, her expression seems to ask: ‘Am I doing this right?’ Her hair has been glossed into perfect, golden ringlets more appropriate for a Moulin Rouge attraction than a child. There was nothing wrong with her original nose. Why on earth did Munca arrange that operation, saddling Georgie with an implausible story about falling over, which she had to recite if anyone recognised the tell-tale, too-perfect symmetry of the nose-job. Fortunately, before their friendship broke down, my father photographed Georgie across four decades — images that show her at her happiest.The life of Buster is hard to uncover, not least because a Google search brings up mainly dogs. After many false leads and dead ends, Mount finally pieces the story together: Buster Baring was married and divorced seven times, before dying in his 50s; his marriage certificates variously describe him as an electrical engineer, ­professional dancer, Grand Prix driver, manager of a joinery and cabinet works, timber merchant, farmer, author, and man “of independent means”. Did Buster know that Munca was his mother? Who did he think was his father? And who on earth were Munca’s real parents? When I was 21, I came out to her by letter. I was terrified. I had been deeply wounded by being outed at school, twice. I was part of the Section 28 generation, unable to go to any authority figure with my worries about being gay in a country that openly hated gay people. Under Margaret Thatcher, the gay liberation gains made in the ’70s were gradually reversed, to the point where the government and the newspapers that supported it were starting to agitate for the re-criminalisation of homosexuality. After I was outed at 16, with disastrous consequences, every self-preserving fibre in me rallied and I ‘inned’ myself permanently so as to survive. I particularly enjoyed Mount's journey of discovery through genealogy research, the way he found out so much from birth, marriage and death certificates. He has a difficult job as Munca didn't seem to tell the truth about herself so every single detail is hard won. And I also want to offer a different perspective. The Georgie of Mount’s book is a broken, tragic alcoholic with what Mount calls, more than once, a ‘ruined life’. It makes for gripping prose, but the Georgie I knew for 40 years was ebullient, fun-loving, bright, and cheerful. There was almost always a humorous glint in her eyes. Yes, she was complicated, but who isn’t? Their will was the one way in which the Mounts might have said ‘sorry’ to Georgie, but — astoundingly — they appear not to have felt that they had anything for which to say sorry. Furthermore, they had clearly primed the trustees to operate against Georgie’s best interests. This process of making a request to the trust was so arduous and frightening for Georgie, it may have hastened her death.

Her creative ambitions had also been suffocated to near-death by her upbringing. She was the best writer I’ve ever known, but the lethal self-doubt inculcated by Munca and Greig proved insurmountable. Sometimes, friends would build her up enough that she’d start regarding herself as competent. At some point in the ’80s, she told my mother and I about the novel she was writing. It was to be called The Social Worker. Anyone who’s ever tried it knows that the most undermining thing you can say to someone writing long-form is, ‘Have you nearly finished yet?’. So we left it to her to give us updates, but they petered out. I still wonder where that manuscript might be. Delightfully compulsive and unforgettably original. Mount unpeels the layers of this mysterious life with the tenacity of an experienced detective and the excitement of a fresh-eyed enthusiast. * Hadley Freeman, author of House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family *

Books

As I read on, I noticed that these scenes had been described in meticulous detail, but I’d been erased from them. Georgie was one remove away from a birth-parent to me. Indeed, she was far more a mother to me than Munca ever was to her. Imagine reading a book about a mother-figure in your life, describing with painstaking precision occasions where you were present but excising you from them. It stung. I was startled that Mount would do something so improper. When two people telephoned me to say they’d noticed the same thing, I realised my reaction wasn’t just down to bruised ego and pettiness. Mount is one of our finest prose stylists and Kiss Myself Goodbye is a witty, moving and beautifully crafted account of one woman’s determination to live to the full.