- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Tarcher (Oct 1 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1585421855
- ISBN-13: 978-1585421855
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 14.2 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,606,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Charnas's memoir of her father Robin's demise begins with the flashbulb moment where she realizes he can't live independently anymore. She asks him to read back the telephone number she has just given him and he responds simply "I didn't get it... I can't see to write it down." Charnas recalls, "I got a sinking feeling. My father was living in a loft on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. I now lived in an adobe house in Albuquerque. My husband and I were launching new careers.... There was no money to spare for flying back and forth to New York." Charnas, a Nebula Award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist, barely hesitates before inviting Robin, whom she hardly knew as a child, to come live in the "in-law" cottage next to her own home. What follows is a moving, thoughtful, sometimes tedious but never sentimental account of how daughter and father get to know each other in middle and old age. Book One lingers a bit too long on Charnas's childhood and opaque, rambling excerpts from Robin's journals. It's clear that she's just trying to paint a clear picture of her curmudgeonly father. But Book Two, which chronicles Robin's time in a nursing home, is much stronger. Here, Robin's unique combination of eccentricity and strength speaks for itself, especially when he's quietly holding hands with his new girlfriend, Jane. Charnas's story is bound to be a guidebook and an inspiration for anyone caring for aging parents. (Oct. 1) Forecast: Blurbs from Tony Hillerman and Peter Straub could make this popular among baby boomers.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When science fiction author Charnas realizes her artist-father can no longer remain alone in his Greenwich Village loft, she has him live with her and her husband in an "in-law" adobe on their Albuquerque property. That final homecoming, far from his beloved New York, is the focus of his daughter's memoir, one rich with flashbacks to her baffling divorce, her childhood, and her sister's relationship with their father, the most difficult man in her life. In the present, Charnas' father refuses to wash his long, greasy hair; he fears that to do so will result in baldness, but what does result is cradle cap, a scalp infection associated with poor hygienic care of infants. He manages to drive--barely--and relies increasingly on Charnas for trips to the grocery store within the narrow time frame when he will be sure to find blueberry muffins there. Throughout, Charnas' beautifully written rendering of this father-daughter duo's humanity holds our attention on the sometimes elusive, often baffling bonds that make a family. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinarily Moving,
By
This review is from: My Fathers Ghost (Hardcover)
This book is about so many different things it's very difficult to know where to begin. It's a remarkably easy book to read. Remarkable because it is such a difficult, even gruelling subject matter--the deterioration and death of a parent--but the book is so gorgeously lucid, so vivid, that it's very hard to stop reading. Of course, it isn't just about the life and death of Charnas' father but about how little we know about one another, how horrible (though sometimes glorious) old age and death can be. This is a book about not knowing your father (a difficult relationship even for those of us whose fathers didn't leave us), about thwarted artistic aspirations, about the impossible choices old age brings, and the ways in which every human being has a story, a life, and some of the unexpected things most of us never find out. I cannot reccommend this book more strongly. I have not been able to stop thinking about it. It's a book that really can change your life.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Our fathers' ghosts, too,
By
This review is from: My Fathers Ghost (Hardcover)
This is a story about real life. An artist father of a writer daughter. A father who walked away when she was eight. A father who in his last decade of life became dependant on his daughter, the stranger.Don't expect saccharine, 'cause there ain't any. No sugar cookies and milk, this is molasses and tea: bitter, dark, and poignant. Revelations, yes, but not of the TV sitcom kind, which are easily provoked and resolved in half an hour. This is deep history, it's the sand in the backyard and the gnarled old olive tree. It's a story told with exasperation and something like love. A story told brilliantly. Thought-provoking reading for those of us with parents heading into their last decade -- parents with whom we share a bad history. Here's a woman who offers refuge to a man who is going blind, and who holds a menial job in a restaurant. She offers him a free home in the sunshine, and the chance to do art. He arrives on her doorstep and proceeds to be exactly the same man he's always been: cantankerous, rude, and skeptical. He doesn't do any art -- not by choice, as it turns out. He doesn't have the emotional resources to make friends and have his own life. Heck, he doesn't even have the ability to make his own dinner. It's a fascinating story, and Charnas is an amazing writer. We get an unvarnished portrait of this man, his daughter, and a series of glimmers into why he left her mother, and why he's such a crank. If another living situation would have been ideal, well that's too bad because they're caught in the vise-grip of American medical economics. He's here to stay, like it or not. Then when his health fails completely, maybe he's too sick to stay home, but maybe not sick enough for Medicare to pay for a bed in a nursing home. Do she and her husband bankrupt themselves to give him adequate care? Charnas' livelihood hangs in the balance, not to mention her sanity. Who hasn't been there? And if we haven't been there, we will be soon. For those of us with difficult parents, it's enlightening to see how one woman's choices begin to unfold. She's no angel of the house -- her own discomfort comes through, and she combats it with exasperated humor. MY FATHER'S GHOST left me with a lasting understanding of tradeoffs. Good parts, bad parts. What I could stand, and what I couldn't. I can't make the same choices she did -- unless, like Charnas, I have to. But the whatever happens, at least I'll go in girded.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unsentimental, thought-provoking auto-biography,
By Lisa Tuttle (Tarbert, Argyll United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Fathers Ghost (Hardcover)
This is a wonderful book, and hard to compare to any other. Sort of a biography (but of an unknown man, a failed artist, someone without any of the usual qualities calling for an official biography), sort of an autobiography/literary memoir (by the author of hard-hitting feminist science fiction, fantasy, children's books, etc.), a personal investigation into what happens to the old and helpless in America, a daughter's memoir of her difficult father... I'm not usually attracted to memoirs, but like Suzy Charnas' fiction so much that I gave it a chance -- and am so glad I did. It is every bit as gripping and absorbing as one of her novels, and, amazingly for a work that focuses so much on her father's declining years, it's not at all bleak -- there are some unexpected surprises along the way, and the lasting impression is an uplifting one. The book raises many important issues around family relationships and aging in America today; it's thought-provoking, and informative, whatever your age and whatever your relationship to your parents. (Well, perhaps the super-rich and the extra-young could give it a miss, but as for the rest of us, this book is important.) Undoubtedly, one of the best books I've read this year. In non-fiction, it goes right up there with Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed". Highly recommended.
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