LOSING MUM and PUP
by: Christopher Buckley
(Twelve/Hachette Book Group: $24.99)
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Reviewed by: Patricia Ann Jones

With love and respect Buckley relates the story of his parents' final year together. His entertaining account of the heartbreaking emotions one faces at becoming an orphan at the age of fifty-five will have you smiling through your tears. Buckley is the author of fourteen books and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine.

Buckley's memoir on his parents, William F. and Patricia Taylor Buckley is unique in that this bigger than life couple embraced a world far different than most of us will ever experience.

William F. Buckley, was the father of the modern conservative movement, prolific author of both fiction and nonfiction books, popular host of one of television's longest-running programs, "Firing Line,"newspaper columnist, and adventurous sailor. His wife Patricia was a woman of great physical beauty and one of New York's most glamorous and colorful socialites. She was known for her many charitable works as well as for her style and grace. Patricia, at first blush, seems an unlikely life-mate for the quixotic Buckley, yet different as they were the two maintained their successful union until death parted them.

One of the first things I noticed about Chris Buckley's writing was how much it reminded me of his father's work. The vernacular is beautifully phrased in a vocabulary an Oxford Don would appreciate. He is unmistakably his father's son. As he reveals the many facets of his parent's life together, he doesn't hesitate to show not only their assets but their foibles.

I learned things about the senior Buckley's life I had not been aware of before. For instance, Spanish was his first language, with English and French following closely behind. Between 1962 and 2008 William wrote some 5,600 columns for publication and fifty-six books. He sailed with his son, and only child, across two oceans, three times. Pup, as Chris called his father, was a great admirer and friend of Ronald Reagan, and became a mentor to Reagan's children Patti and Ron.

Buckley writes, "Pup and Mum had a binary energy that made people want to be near them. While visiting in Switzerland, which they did often, they entertained the whole jumbo jet set. All came to the Buckley's Chateau to be wined and fed and to laugh. They were the fun Americans: the cool intellectual who wrote spy novels on the side and his lovely, witty, outrageous wife. They had, how to put it? — Class!"

At the end of William's life, sick as he was, he continued to write. "It was as if his mind were still a brightly burning fire deep within the wreckage of his body . . ." He never recovered from losing his wife to death just a year before he, too, left this life. Even though he once wrote a harsh critique of his alma mater, Yale University, he remained a "Yalie" all his life.

Buckley quotes that wonderful old song Yalies often sing, the Wiffenpoofs song. "We will serenade our Louie, while life and voice shall last, Then pass and be forgotten with the rest." William F. Buckley and his dear wife have passed, but thanks to their devoted only child, Christopher, they'll never be forgotten.