When Did You Last See Your Father? - by Blake Morrison (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The critically-acclaimed memoir and the basis for the 2007 motion picture, directed by Anand Tucker and starring Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent

And when did you last see your father? Was it last weekend or last Christmas? Was it before or after he exhaled his last breath? And was it him really, or was it a version of him, shaped by your own expectations and disappointments?

Blake Morrison's subject is universal: the life and death of a parent, a father at once beloved and exasperating, charming and infuriating, domineering and terribly vulnerable. In reading about Dr. Arthur Morrison, we come to ask ourselves the same searching questions that Blake Morrison poses: Can we ever see our parents as themselves, or are they forever defined through a child's eyes? What are the secrets of their lives, and why do they spare us that knowledge? And when they die, what do they take with them that cannot be recovered or inherited?

When Did You Last See Your Father?: A Son's Memoir of Love and Loss has also been published as And When Did You Last See Your Father?

Review Quotes

"Mr. Morrison holds up before our gaze a small but vivid piece of reality, bringing it close enough to touch. . . . And When Did You Last See Your Father? seems destined to become a small classic of its kind." --The New York Times Book Review

"An effort to see death clearly . . . Blake Morrison's uncompromising honesty makes this memoir a powerful reading experience." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

About the Author

Blake Morrison is a memoirist, poet, playwright, and novelist. He lives in London.