McEwan's long-lost brother and the color of his collar

Currently reading Ian McEwan's Saturday (yes, I know I'm the last person in the world to get around to reading this, etc., etc.), so this Guardian article about McEwan's long-lost brother ("Bricklayer traces his long-lost brother, Ian McEwan") caught my eye.

What strikes me as extraordinary about this story is not so much that Ian McEwan's long-lost brother is a bricklayer but that Ian McEwan has a long-lost brother at all. (I mean, how many people meet a full-blood sibling that they never had the slightest idea existed?) Yet the article seems very blasé about the whole 'family-I-never-knew' aspect and instead strains to point out the blue collar history of the brother (prime example: the title of the article; why use "bricklayer" as the lead-off word?). Perhaps I'm reading hypersensitively*, but the article comes across as somewhat elitist, particularly when Dave Sharp is referred to as "the bricklayer" instead of simply using his name or even saying "McEwan's brother."

At least Mr. Sharp seems to be keeping the discovery of his sibling in perspective: "I had never heard of him. Of course, I've read all of his books now, but whether he's a road-sweeper or an author is immaterial. He's just my brother to me."


*BTW, I am hereby campaigning for "hypersensitively" to be acknowledged by the dictionary as a "real word." So useful!