Father and Son

A Memoir

By: Jonathan Raban

Narrated by: James Langton

A poignant memoir of love, trauma, and recovery after a life-changing stroke, twinned to a powerful account of his father's experience in World War II, by a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

“A beautiful, compelling memoir...Raban’s final work is a gorgeous achievement.”—Ian McEwan, New York Times best-selling author of Lessons

In June 2011, just days before his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban was sitting down to dinner with his daughter when he found he couldn’t move his knife to his plate. Later that night, at the hospital, doctors confirmed what all had suspected: that he had suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke, paralyzing the right side of his body. Once he became stable, Raban embarked on an extended stay at a rehabilitation center, where he became acquainted with, and struggled to accept, the limitations of his new body—learning again how to walk and climb stairs, attempting to bathe and dress himself, and rethinking how to write and even read.

Woven into this book is an account of a second battle, one that his own father faced in the trenches during World War II. With intimate letters that his parents exchanged at the time, Raban places the budding love of two young people within the tumultuous landscape of the war’s various fronts, from the munition-strewn beaches of Dunkirk to blood-soaked streets of Anzio. Moving between narratives, his and theirs, Raban artfully explores the human capacity to adapt to trauma, as well as the warmth, strength, and humor that persist despite it. The result is Father and Son, a powerful story of mourning, but also one of resilience.

©2023 Jonathan Raban (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Father and Son is a deeply moving career capstone... his final book, [it] recounts his struggle in that rehab, juxtaposed with his father’s experience as a young British officer in World War II, during his parents’ first years of marriage. It seems an odd pairing at first... until, bit by bit, something remarkable and beautiful and ever so subtle grows, and Father and Son becomes Raban's finest and most moving book... It is poignant and crushing. The father arriving home from war, the son arriving home from a stroke...A story about life, its arc from beginning to end... A life ending, a life beginning. Father and son. I wept." —Carl Hoffman, The Washington Post

"[Jonathan Raban] was the kind of writer we don't have in quantity... It's our luck that he left this lively and bittersweet memoir behind... We find ourselves inside the mind of an outraged, indefatigable commentator on life... Every writing day, he asked himself two questions: 'What have I lost?' and 'Am I fooling myself?'...[The] result of his labors makes the responses clear: a) very little, and b) no."—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A moving coda to a writer's life...[Jonathan Raban was] an influential English writer and dedicated smoker, who was admired for his stylish prose and sharp intelligence...His analysis of himself was as acute as his observations about the places he visited...[and] his writer’s instincts were intact even in his stroke’s immediate aftermath...[Father and Son] is an unexpected opportunity to share his funny, self-deprecating and perceptive company one last time and to mark his passing with the significance it deserves."—Max Liu, Financial Times

Beautiful writing, great personal account of World War II

The writing in this book is exquisite. Carefully, chosen words, and carefully structured sentences. the letters from his father to his mother, during the war became a bit ponderous. But that may be because they are from another era when people were more earnest.