He will need a raincoat
Blake Morrison: Fathers and Sons, 14 July 2016
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
by Hisham Matar.
Viking, 276 pp., £14.99, June 2016,978 0 670 92333 5 Show More
by Hisham Matar.
Viking, 276 pp., £14.99, June 2016,
“... All fathers are unknowable to their sons but some are more mysterious than others. The Victorian stereotype was a whiskered patriarch behind a study door, the son, barred from entry, tiptoeing past. Now the door is open, and the study has been converted to a playroom, and fathers are expected to be on hand. Even so, inaccessibility remains a dominant motif: the workaholic dad, out early and back late, available only at weekends; the divorced dad, living elsewhere, available only on alternate weekends; the abusive or alcoholic dad, available but not to be trusted; the sperm donor dad, available only since 2005, when a change in the law removed his right to anonymity; the accidental dad, heedless of the consequences of his donation, unacquainted with or unaware of his offspring ... ”