The first father-son story to leave a mark on me had Abraham, on God’s orders, preparing to kill his only son: “He bound Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife …” God then calls off the infanticide; a ram is sacrificed instead. It’s meant to be an upbeat ending but as a child the story terrified me. There I lay, on a pile of wood, about to be murdered by my Dad.
Freudians offer a theory that’s the other way about, with the son killing the father. And the Dad-Lit genre can’t help but have a strain of the Oedipus complex, as the old man is ousted and the boy takes his place. But grudging affection is common too – for a life well lived, or a man who deserved better, or a rogue whose faults are dissected and, sometimes, forgiven. Daughters offer a different perspective on dads, with Jackie Kay, AM Homes, Kathryn Harrison and Aminatta Forna among the pick. But when I came to write my own memoir, nearly 30 years ago, my perspective was that of a grieving son.
I never expected to write about my Dad, a Yorkshire GP who died of cancer at 75; I’d spent decades trying to escape him. But in the months after his death, he was all I could think about. He’d been an exasperating, larger-than-life character, about whom there were many stories to tell, not all of them flattering. A novel would have spared us both embarrassment. But I wanted to stick to the truth and thought that the father-son nonfiction genre was an empty field. Hah! Sometimes ignorance is a useful ally.
1. Patrimony by Philip Roth
This was a memoir I had read, one of its threads being illness, as mine was too. In describing his father Herman’s brain tumour, diagnosed at the age of 86, Roth’s gift is to offset a story that’s sad and sometimes grim (one section has him cleaning up his father’s shit) with generosity and humour, recalling, for instance, how women made a play for Herman in his widowhood, only to find that he was still married, “if not to my mother any longer, to their marriage”. Though Roth, as a young man, had to grow away from his father in order to write, he’s struck by how their lives are “enmeshed and spookily interchangeable” – a point brought home when he has an emergency quadruple bypass during Herman’s illness.
2. Father and Son by Edmund Gosse
Published anonymously in 1907 – anonymously because its departure from the Victorian tradition of filial piety was shocking – this claims, against the odds, to be a “scrupulously true” memoir. It records a “clash of two temperaments”, though it is the father’s – “without breadth, without suppleness and without imagination” – that comes off worse. The epilogue shows the son, at 21, escaping patriarchy and Christian fundamentalism “to fashion his inner life for himself”.
3. My Father and Myself by JR Ackerley
This was published posthumously (the year after his death in 1967) rather than anonymously. It too has a disturbing tale to tell, of how Joe’s father secretly ran a second family – a lover and three daughters – for 20 years. The revelation came in a sealed note left behind on his father’s death: “I am not going to make any excuses, old man. I have done my duty towards everybody as far as my nature would allow and I hope people will generally be kind to my memory.” Joe is kind, resenting only his father’s failure to confide in him rather than what he did. He outdoes him in candour by describing his own sexuality (he was gay) and his erotic attachment to his Alsatian bitch Tulip, to whom the memoir is dedicated.
4. The Return by Hisham Matar
This recounts the author’s determined efforts, over many years, to discover what happened to his father, a prominent opponent of the Gaddafi regime who was kidnapped and imprisoned in Libya. It’s a book about searching for answers and not getting them – and about being fobbed off by everyone from British MPs to one of Gaddafi’s sons. By the end Matar is almost relieved to stop hoping – to accept that his father probably died in a prison massacre. What never lessens is his love for his father and pride in his talent and commitment.
5. Letter to His Father by Franz Kafka
“Dearest Father, recently you asked me why I say I’m afraid of you,” Kafka begins, and defends himself against his father’s view of him as “cold, remote, ungrateful”. Written in his mid-30s, he imagined the letter might clear the air between them but its vehemence over paternal ill-treatment (abuse, threats, mockery and tyranny) would have made things much worse if Hermann had read it – in the event, Kafka’s mother refused to hand it over to him.
6. A Clip of Steel by Thomas Blackburn
A “picaresque autobiography” from 1969, in which the author’s father, a Mauritius-born country vicar, exerts firm control over his son, not least through the device of the title – a mechanical instrument with spiked teeth which Thomas was instructed to attach to his penis in bed at boarding school in order to deter nocturnal emissions.
7. 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.
8. Fathers by Sam Miller
The story of a dual allegiance – to Karl Miller, the literary editor who with his wife, Jane, brought Sam up as one of their three children, and to Tony White, the polyamorous, hippy birth-father who he never knew (and only discovered was his father in his teens). The book pays lively homage to them both.
9. Just Ignore Him by Alan Davies
A poignant memoir about the insidious sexual abuse Davies suffered from his dad after his mum’s early death – and the further evidence he discovers of his dad’s paedophilia. It’s angry but also funny, with vivid period detail from 1970s Essex. The chapter called Hands (“You must never tell anyone about this cuddle”) is masterly.
10. Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour
The latest addition to Dad-Lit alternates between Gilmour’s awkward relationship with the poet Heathcote Williams, the father who abandoned him as a baby, and his adoption of a magpie who makes a home with him in Bermondsey: an offbeat and touching tale.
• A new edition of Blake Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father? is published by Granta at £10. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
