cover image TWO OF US: The Story of a Father, a Son, and the Beatles

TWO OF US: The Story of a Father, a Son, and the Beatles

Peter Smith, . . Houghton Mifflin, $23 (206pp) ISBN 978-0-618-25145-2

This sincere but uneven memoir by novelist Smith (A Good Family ) recounts how he and his seven-year-old son were brought closer together through a mutual love of the Beatles. After young Sam discovers his parents' old albums and cassettes, he takes to the Fab Four with a love that finds him teaching his Beatle-loving parents "more than we could ever teach him: names, dates, working song titles, even the Liverpool bus routes Paul and George took as adolescents." Smith shows how he was able to use the Beatles' saga, with its combination of "boyhood friendships" and "insanely intricate relationships," to answer his son's questions about life, love, art and death. He also provides excellent insights into the ongoing appeal of the Beatles for ever-younger audiences, and how "the Beatles' universe offers up the dreamy self-containment of any great magical realm." However, perhaps because Boomer-era Smith admits he was a McCartney fan while the harder-edged Lennon seemed scary, he too often veers from providing insight to serving treacle, such as his repeated references to his son's beauty, his attempts to resolve his feelings about his own father and a moment at the real Penny Lane during a father-son road trip to Liverpool when he asks, "Where was my childhood?" Still, this has more than enough poignant moments for any parent who has sung along with their children to Help! or who cried when George Harrison died. (Feb.)