Overview

The bestselling author of The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humour and rewards of raising two sons. When Tim O’Brien became an older father, he resolved to give his young sons what he wished his own father had given to him – a few scraps of paper signed ‘Love, Dad’. Maybe a word of advice. Maybe a sentence or two about some long-ago Christmas Eve. Maybe some scattered glimpses of their rapidly ageing father, a man they might never really know. For the next fifteen years, the author talked to his sons on paper, as if they were adults, imagining what they might want to hear from a father who was no longer among the living. O’Brien traverses the great variety of human experience and emotion, moving from soccer games to warfare to risqué lullabies, from alcoholism to magic shows to history lessons to bittersweet bedtime stories, but always returning to a father’s soul-saving love for his sons. The result is Dad’s Maybe Book, a funny, tender, wise, and enduring literary achievement that will squeeze the reader’s heart with joy and recognition.

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9780008372491

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Reviews

‘[A] stirring blend of memoir, letters to his young sons, and meditations on the humbling nature of parenthood…It’s a work that’s the spiritual inheritor of John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley and Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country. [O’Brien] takes absolutism to task, finds qualifications for his own pacifism and considers the paradox of a moral society that allows for forever war’ Time Magazine ‘O'Brien uses his deft skill of wordplay throughout this latest book…Fans of parenting books, memoirs, and stories of Vietnam War veterans will find enjoyment in these heartfelt words’ Library Journal

'[A] stirring blend of memoir, letters to his young sons, and meditations on the humbling nature of parenthood...It's a work that's the spiritual inheritor of John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley and Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country. [O'Brien] takes absolutism to task, finds qualifications for his own pacifism and considers the paradox of a moral society that allows for forever war' Time Magazine 'O'Brien uses his deft skill of wordplay throughout this latest book...Fans of parenting books, memoirs, and stories of Vietnam War veterans will find enjoyment in these heartfelt words' Library Journal

Author Information

Tim O’Brien was born in Minnesota and served as a foot soldier in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, and after graduate studies at Harvard worked as a reporter for the Washington Post. When ‘If I Die in a Combat Zone’ was published in 1973, it established him as one of the leading American writers of his generation, a status that was confirmed when ‘Going After Cacciato’ won the National Book Award for fiction.

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