How does one young man survive the deaths of his entire family and manage to make something worthwhile of his life? In this poignant and original coming-of-age story, indie rock musician Mark Oliver Everett tells the story of his “ridiculous, sometimes tragic, and always unsteady” upbringing and how it fed into his creativity. The insecure son of a genius physicist, Everett was left to run wild with his sister while his father was off in some parallel universe of his own invention. A strin...

Mark Oliver Everett's upbringing was 'ridiculous, sometimes tragic and always unsteady'. His father - a quantum mechanic who worked for the Pentagon - was a genius who had corresponded with Einstein aged 13. He rarely spoke, and following his own miserable childhood had eccentric ideas of how children should be brought up. Mark - known as 'E' - and his older sister Liz were raised in a house with no rules, with parents who had 'a kind of seventies swinging marriage'.Lacking any real...