Jack and Me refuses to sanitise suicide, grief or the people we lose

Jack and Me: One Clueless Dad, One Lost Son is Landesman memoir on the tragic suicide of his son Jack. Although he is a seasoned social commentator his ability to hold a mirror to his own grief was still unexpectedly exceptional. The result is a book that is heartbreaking, funny and, above all, profoundly human.

It is not a memoir about finding closure or discovering life's hidden lessons. It is a deeply honest account of what happens after the platitudes have worn thin. Landesman has spoken about wanting to write the book he couldn’t find himself, something that was an honest account of losing a child that resisted cliché, sentimentality and easy answers. It feels odd to say I loved it but I did. It's raw, often painfully funny, and refreshingly free of the language that can make books about grief feel performative.

A few months after my own loss to suicide, I opened this book convinced it wasn’t meant for me but what struck me immediately was his refusal to sanitise either suicide or Jack. He has spoken about how frustrating he found the public language around suicide, where people are so often reduced to saints and difficult truths are quietly erased. The result is that we end up mourning an edited version of someone, rather than the person we actually loved.

It’s in a very British, pragmatic tone, which became a great comfort to me in a world filled with California-esque self-help language that I’ve never truly related with.

He writes honestly about his son’s addiction, his lifestyle, his flaws, his humour and the complexity of their relationship. It would have been easier to smooth over those parts of Jack’s life, but instead Landesman gives him back his full humanity. Jack isn’t remembered as perfect. He is remembered as funny, frustrating, intelligent, vulnerable and deeply loved.

My experience was profoundly different. I am not a parent and the person I lost was a close friend. Depending on what day of the week you ask me, I’ll give you a different answer for why it happened. I think like most suicides there were a lot of things at play. But there was no doubt that, like Jack, my friend Jenn was suffering with addiction. Landesman’s willingness to tell the truth about Jack felt like permission to remember Jenn honestly too.

Within a singular chapter I would experience both laughter and tears and it felt fitting for me. Jenn had an incredibly dark sense of humour and a razor-sharp wit. Those qualities echoed throughout Landesman’s memories of Jack and in the way he writes about him. I expected to admire Landesman’s writing but I did not expect it to help me so deeply despite the obvious differences between our experiences.

That is perhaps the book’s greatest achievement. Although it was born from one of the most specific and devastating forms of grief imaginable - the loss of a child - Landesman seems almost unaware of the comfort he has created for readers whose losses look entirely different. He set out to write the book he wished had existed for parents grieving the loss of a child like Jack. In doing so, he also wrote one for friends, siblings, partners and anyone trying to make sense of losing someone to suicide.

There is no hierarchy of grief in these pages. There is simply the recognition that love leaves an absence, whatever shape that love took. He refuses to tidy up mourning into neat stages or lessons. Instead, he writes about memory, guilt, absurdity and the strange moments of laughter that somehow survive even the darkest periods. His humour never undermines the seriousness of Jack’s death. If anything, it makes the reality of grief feel more truthful. Anyone who has experienced profound loss knows that laughter often returns before happiness does.

One of the greatest gifts Jenn ever gave me was an introduction to her sister, Josie. We met around ten years ago, and she also became one of the great loves of my life. Reading Landesman's reflections helped me become a better friend to her and, I hope, offer some comfort in the aftermath of losing her sister. More than anything, it encouraged me to stop searching for the perfect words. There weren't any. It gave me permission to stop being so careful around her grief and simply be there, without trying to soften or solve it. That may be one of the most generous things this memoir offers.

Too often, books about bereavement are marketed only to people whose circumstances exactly match the author’s and they try to offer inspiration or a solution. In not trying to be inspiring - the book becomes just that. But, this is not a self-help book, nor is it interested in becoming one. It doesn’t promise healing or closure because neither really exists in the tidy form we like to imagine. Instead, it offers something quieter and ultimately more valuable.

That is an extraordinary gift from the author and It is essential reading for anyone either living in the aftermath of suicide or simply loving someone who is.