Keith McNally begins this book with a stroke and a suicide attempt – but don’t let that put you off. This brilliantly open, funny and heartfelt memoir is a delight from beginning to end.
Best known as the creator of a series of wildly successful New York restaurants, McNally is tremendous company – even when retelling stories of sadness and regret. He was encouraged to write by his lifelong friend, and former lover the playwright Alan Bennett.
Recovering in a psychiatric hospital he lays out his triumphs, his joys and his failings –trying to work out how things could go so right for him, and also so wrong.
What went right were his business ventures – or most of them. McNally was responsible for a string of scene-making restaurants – from the late-night Odeon – which became a mecca for the downtown art and music world – to the gorgeous Balthazar, a recreation of the soul of Paris in the heart of New York.
There’s a fascinating insight into his world when he describes how an antique postcard from France became the inspiration for Balthazar. The image shows waiters with long white aprons, bottles packed high behind the bar and a row of stone goddesses holding up the ceiling.
He had to find the building, find the money, find the chefs, create the menu – but McNally made it all happen on a forgotten side street in downtown New York. Woody Allen and Anna Wintour are among the regulars.
Despite his early dalliances with men, McNally has been married twice, to beautiful accomplished women, he has four children he adores – and who rally round to take care of business after his illness.
But as he weaves his narrative back and forth between his business, his romantic life and his family history he realises he has often felt removed from life, not present, not fully able to enjoy the moment. Something has always been missing.
Business failures don’t seem to derail him – but personal failures do. He looks back upon his childhood in an East End prefab to try to figure out how things go wrong.
This isn’t a misery memoir and there is a complete lack of psychobabble. This is a genuine attempt to unpick the mystery of life. What makes things work and what makes them break. How a person with beautiful homes, famous friends and a knack for making wonderful things happen, can simultaneously be confused adrift and suffering.
McNally has talent and charm in abundance and in many ways his life has been extraordinarily blessed. But his ability to face the fragility of life is what makes this book so beautiful.
I really didn’t want it to end. Do read it.
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/I-Regret-Almost-Everything/Keith-McNally/9781398544222
