Author John Niven tells of devastating impact of brother's suicide in new book

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There is an agonising moment in John Niven’s memoir as he writes of his legs giving way and sliding to the floor after discovering his beloved brother’s debts.

His younger sibling Gary was lying in a medically induced coma a few miles away in an Ayrshire hospital after the suicide attempt that would ultimately end his life.

John’s pain is palpable on the pages as the bestselling novelist, known for his weapon-grade sweary prose, breaks down in his 42-year-old brother’s home after finding his electricity cut off and a raft of red unpaid bills.

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A few thousand pounds that in part resulted in his brother choosing to end his life. Had he known, the former music executive would have paid it off in a heartbeat.

A decade after Gary’s death, O Brother is the most brutally honest account of suicide and what it does to a family. John, now 55, calls the book a forced confession. And the person he spares least in the telling is himself.

He recounts without gloss his final harsh words over the phone to wayward Gary and the dismissive way he’d reacted over the years to his sibling’s low-level criminality. Weary of his erratic behaviour, he was blind to the flashing red lights above his brother’s head, warning of what was to come.

He said: “Suicide is like a Chernobyl of the soul. You try and find peace with it. But questions are always left.

“All the warning signs were there with Gary. He was in his 40s, single, living by himself, no job, probably thinking his best years were behind him, in debt, in pain, suffering from incredible cluster headaches.

“You become an expert in suicide after the event. It’s a cliche but even that day I was thinking about how many other people were in the same position with bills mounting up, no electricity because they can’t afford to top up the meter, those purple keys, for god’s sake, charging the poorest in society the most for power, people sitting alone in the dark and cold.”

Yet this is no misery memoir, John brings his brother to life with real tenderness and love mixed with familiar west of Scotland black humour.

There are as many laugh-out-loud moments as searingly painful ones. The boys grew up in a working-class estate in Irvine with baby sister Linda and parents John and Jeanette.

John describes Gary, nicknamed Shades, as being the good-looking, fearless, charming brother with plenty of pals and girlfriends. A 90s raver popping ecstasy pills who would then morph into a low-level Begbie-type hardman clad in designer gear.

Music-obsessed John would move south after finding some success with his band, then go to Glasgow university and become an A&R man as Gary remained in Irvine.

John said: “Gary was hilariously funny. I’d come home and he’d do his rent-a-ned chat partly to scandalise me and partly because he knew I was amused by it.

“I’d be out with pals in London and mention some crazy madness that Gary had got himself involved in and they would love it, find it hilarious and before I knew it, they’d be begging me to tell them more.”

But the death of their father, when they were both in their 20s, had a profound effect on them both.

Gary seemed to further embrace his role as the black sheep of the family, causing trouble, living to excess, and John was doing much the same. As he admits, he had the well-paid music industry job, an expense account but was also unfulfilled, ­dreaming of one day of being a writer.

John said: “Doing the book made me look at the timeline of our lives. Gary’s most stable period was when he met a girlfriend, settled down, had a baby and bought a house.

“That coincided with the toughest time of my life. I’d quit the music business and was ­trying to make it as a writer and I had no money.” When John got his book deal and Kill Your Friends came out in 2008, he was feted as the new Irvine Welsh, who he met in the 90s and who remains one of his closest friends today.

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But Gary’s life had started to crumble and his girlfriend left over his behaviour, taking their son.

John said: “I wonder often about that rave generation of the 90s who had the time of their lives and how many cope with getting older, the levels of serotonin much depleted.” For a ­decade, John was a Sunday Mail ­columnist. He might have had huge success and critical acclaim as a ­novelist and screenwriter but wouldn’t entertain those who scoffed at him writing for a tabloid newspaper.

He’d say that the Sunday Mail and the Daily Record were “the papers” when he was growing up and he’d write for who he liked. Angry and opinionated, his columns, peppered with hilarious political fury, would become a must-read.

Two years after Gary’s death in 2010, he wrote a very personal piece about his brother and readers loved it too.

John said: “That was when I knew that one day I’d write a book about Gary’s death. It was a universal subject that would resonate with people. I just had to find the right words.”

The one person who won’t read O Brother is his mum, who still lives in Ayrshire and remains his biggest fan.

The father of four said: “My mum reads everything I write but I did sit her down and ask her not to read this. And she doesn’t want to. She lived it and there will be some things she may find too harsh, especially about my dad and his complicated relationship with Gary. It was her 80th birthday recently and we had a big surprise party for her at the house.

“She was surrounded by her grandchildren – she loves that.

“We had 60 or 70 people and I gave a wee speech which was like a family quiz and I’d put in one question about Gary and as soon as I said his name, I saw her face.

She remains haunted by it. He was her beautiful boy.

“And when I look at my children and think of one of them doing the same thing, well, I talk about it in the book.

“It’s a place that if you let your mind go there, you have to stop. It’s too terrible. “

And what would Gary have thought of the memoir? John pauses.

He said: “It’s hard to say. The three books I had published before he died were stacked up underneath the telly in his flat. The only comment he made about any of them came via a friend who had asked if he had read The Amateurs.

"Pieces of that novel were very much inspired by the kind of criminal tomfoolery that my brother had got up to. Gary apparently said, ‘Oh, it was a bit close to home’.

"But I was having dinner with a friend recently and telling her that as children, when someone asked Gary something I’d answer. I always used to talk for him.

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“She looked at me and said, ‘and you still are’.

“She was right. I’m still talking for him. About him. That’s what he would say.”

● O Brother, by John Niven, published by Canongate, £18.99.

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