Product Description

First published in 1993, Blake Morrison's "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. It became a bestseller, and inspired a whole genre of confessional memoirs. This new edition includes a new afterword by the author."And When Did You Last See Your Father?" won the Waterstone's/Volvo/Esquire Award for Non-Fiction and the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, 1993.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6537 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
* Film tie-in starring Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson. Release Autumn 2007 * 'A painful, funny, frightening, moving, marvellous book... everybody should read it' Nick Hornby * 'Tender, honest, angry, loyal, this extraordinary book balances the life, illness and death of a forceful father with the feelings of his independent son' The Times * 'This luminous tribute to a beloved dad made me laugh until I cried and cry till my nostrils were raw. A masterpiece - one of those books that you treasure forever' Val Hennessy * 'A marvellous piece of family literature. He says much about death and dying and more about life and living. Sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny, above all, unforgettably humane' Sydney Morning Herald * 'A splendid book...it leaps with life' Irish Times

From the Publisher
To celebrate the film adaptation of Blake Morrison's ground-breaking memoir, Granta Books are proud to publish this special edition film tie-in of "And When Did You Last See Your Father"

About the Author
Blake Morrison is the author of several books, including As If, and his essay collection, Too True. His latest book is Things My Mother Never Told Me (Vintage/Granta US). He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

painful and honest
This is a fascinating book. It is about the loss of Morrison's father to cancer at the age of 75. He was diagnosed late and died within four weeks of diagnosis. The book swings between memoirs of Morrison's time with his father as a child and at other key points in his life, interspersed with narrative of the last four weeks, and the funeral afterwards.
This edition is particularly good. It has been republished as a film tie-in and has an afterword by the author written in 2006 about how and why he wrote the book and what it meant to him, his family and those who read it. I felt it finished the book off perfectly and I would have felt a bit cheated if I hadn't read this section because of buying an earlier publication.
Morrison is quite painfully honest about the complexities of his relationship with his father. His enduring love for him is always clear but he never flinches from the ambiguities that love for a parent can throw up, and it is this which makes this book rise above the ordinary.
The fact that he is willing to show himself and his father in a less than perfect light makes it tender and touching and real in a way that a glowing obituary or sanitised eulogy never could.

Life changing literature
Whilst Morrisons work is a wonderful tribute to his fathers life - good and bad, this books main achievement is to make all of us children of a 'certain age' to sit down and re-evaluate our relationship with our parents, and drives us to cherish the time we have together, as life is painfully short.

Couldn't stop reading
Only one complaint about this - I enjoyed it so much that it ruined my holiday. I ignored everybody - very honest, believeable - fantastically written.