Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces
by Michael Chabon
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Pub Date 15 May 2018 | Archive Date 23 Nov 2018
HarperCollins UK, 4th Estate, William Collins | Fourth Estate
Description
Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Manhood for Amateurs and Moonglow, returns with a collection of heartfelt, humorous and insightful essays on the meaning of fatherhood.
You are born into a family and those are your people, and they know you and they love you and if you are lucky they even, on occasion, manage to understand you. And that ought to be enough. But it is never enough
What are you allowed to talk about with your children? When to step in with advice, when to let them make their own mistakes? It’s more complicated than you think. Somehow you muddle through.
In this heartfelt, humorous and wise book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon attempts to weigh in on difficult conversations with his children, on everything from texting girls to death. But it is when he hangs back that he catches them transforming into their own people. What emerges is a father’s deep respect for his children’s passions and for their bravery in the face of conformity.
Whether you know the joy and struggles of being a father, or were shaped by one, you will find a home in these stunning essays.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9780008286309 |
| PRICE | £5.49 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 288 |
Featured Reviews
Sam W, Reviewer
I have read an enjoyed a number of Michael Chabon's novels. He is a fine writer. He writes his characters with warmth, sensitivity and not a little bit of love. It is possible to infer from his books that Chabon is a nice guy.
Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces is a short, sweet collection of essays about being both parent and child. Chabon is a good guy, an idiosyncratic parent of equally quirky children. Bringing them up in bohemian Berkeley in Southern California has allowed them to develop as equally odd and nice kids. The writer is aware, and apologetic for his white privilege, and for occasionally a ‘dickish' man. I think he protests too much.
There are two key quotes in this book that explain the author to the reader.
When Michael was 10, he read Edgar Allen Poe's poem ‘Alone.’
‘From childhood’s hour I have not been as others were, I have not seen as others saw.’ Michael is always set back from the action, an observer. One of these things is not like the others.
Later on, during an essay on following his doctor father out on his rounds:
“Some quirk in me, in the wiring of my brain or the capability of my heart, enabled me to ride the bare rails of his memory into the past... ...I knew immediately that it was my secret superpower.”
The writer has found his calling, and is among his people.
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Edited by Joanna Cannon
Biographies & Memoirs, Health, Mind & Body, Nonfiction (Adult)
