Thursday, November 3, 2022

Top 10 books about fathers and sons

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, and educated at Nottingham University, McMaster University and University College, London. After working for the Times Literary Supplement, he went on to become literary editor of both The Observer and the Independent on Sunday before becoming a full-time writer in 1995.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and former Chair of the Poetry Book Society and Vice-Chair of PEN, Morrison has written fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism and libretti, as well as adapting plays for the stage. His best-known works are probably his two memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me.

At the Guardian Morrison tagged ten top books about fathers and sons, including:
My Father’s Fortune by Michael Frayn

A childhood memoir that features an endearingly eccentric father, who’s a cricket enthusiast and salesman for an asbestos firm – and an early widower too. Frayn’s tone is genial. Instead of an oedipal battle, there’s banter; instead of a jostle for supremacy, lots of joshing. Lots of good jokes, too.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue