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When Did You Last See Your Father?: A Son's Memoir of Love and Loss Paperback – May 13, 2008

by Blake Morrison (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 268 ratings
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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?

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Picador
  4. Publication date
    May 13, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.51 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780312427092
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0312427092
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“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. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and former Chair of the Poetry Book Society and Vice-Chair of PEN, he is best known for his memoir When Did You Last See Your Father?.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0312427093
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; First Edition (May 13, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780312427092
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312427092
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.51 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 268 ratings

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Blake Morrison

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
268 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Margo Price - Author
5.0 out of 5 stars A heartfelt and touching book
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2015
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This was a fabulous book - as I would expect from the great Blake Morrison - and one which touched me deeply. My father was also distant and I felt I never got to know the real man. He is in a dementia home now and further away than ever. This book highlights the pain of distant parents and the effect their distance has on their children. One to read again and again!
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4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2016
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Beautifully written bringing many forgotten moments to mind.
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Todd Burrichter
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2018
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great book
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Barb F.
5.0 out of 5 stars I really liked this book!
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2007
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A very moving book. That every adult man or woman should read about the relationship between adult child and their parent/s
2 people found this helpful
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spp
4.0 out of 5 stars spp
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2010
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Sad story about a little boy who just couldn't get the love he needed from his father.
One person found this helpful
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Elizabeth Green
5.0 out of 5 stars An important book to read
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2000
After his father was diagnosed with cancer, Blake Morrison & his family watch him quickly deteriorate & die within a matter of weeks. In trying to come to terms with his death, the author takes you back to the times he spent with his father through childhood to adolescence & adulthood. He writes an honest account of his feelings towards his father both good & bad, alternating between memories of the past & the current trauma of watching him fade away.
His experience is not unique which makes this a very important book to read.
14 people found this helpful
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L. Tay
4.0 out of 5 stars A poignant read
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2013
"And When Did You Last See Your Father?" is Blake Morrison's beautifully written 1993 best-selling memoir about coming to terms with the death of his father.

The book alternates between the present and past, using flashbacks to show the evolution of a horribly conflicted father-son relationship from the son's point of view--as both a child and an adult. In the present, Arthur (Blake's father) is a retired physician in Yorkshire, recently diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer. Blake--now a successful writer, poet and critic--returns home to help his mother and sister care for his dying father. Arthur had hoped that his son would follow in his footsteps and become a physician, but the book-loving Blake had no interest in Science...and consequently became the butt of his father's bullying humor. Although the adult Blake is boiling with anger and resentment towards his father who never acknowledged his achievements, he manages to find some humor as he examines his past and copes with the present.

As the town's general practitioner, Arthur was admired by his patients and the community. They weren't aware of his penchant for cruel and abusive behavior towards his family, however. He would often embarrass his wife and children by lying his way into private clubs or events. He was a cheap-skate do-it-yourselfer, always looking for money-saving, time-saving or privilege-attaining opportunities. Arthur loved his family, it seemed, but he played by a different set of rules, even carrying on a long-term affair with a family friend right under his family's nose. Blake was already suspicious by the time he was nine, recalling how odd it was that his father spent so much time alone with "Aunt Beaty."

Now that his father's death is imminent, though, Blake questions his disdain for the man who would rather repair a broken electrical appliance than read a book. "Why had I thought my interests more important, less ephemeral than his? What could I compare with this monument he'd built to himself? What consolation can art be, what comfort are reading and writing, now that grief streams through the trees and this home he made for living in is about to become the house where he will die?"

As Blake recalls many of his disastrous childhood memories, he grapples with his feelings for his father and struggles to find forgiveness. He wants to offer love and support during these final days, but it isn't easy, because so many of his memories show his father's cruel side.

The title, "When Did You Last See Your Father?" refers to Blake's struggle to recall his father--not as a sick or dying man, nor as a bully or the larger than life figure he remembers from his childhood--but rather as an ordinary human being with weaknesses and insecurities, as well as strengths. The memory that finally comes to his mind is a day they managed to accomplish a task without a major argument...some bickering, of course, but only a little.

In the end, the story is a bitter-sweet one of forgiveness, one that anyone who's lost a parent--or dealt with a difficult one--can relate to. As Blake so aptly puts it: "You spend your lifetime trying to avoid talking to someone and all of a sudden it's too late."
5 people found this helpful
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Bonnie Brody
4.0 out of 5 stars Grieving the Loss of A Father
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2009
This book is a memoir about the author's father and the author's attempt to process
his grief following his father's death. We share the author's experiences and emotions
as he watches his father die of cancer. The author also attempts to make sense of his
relationship with his father and understand the person that his father was. This book
is a good examination of the grief/loss process.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

WT
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2023
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Essential that is, if you have lost your dad and/or mum for that matter, but I couldn't say if it is essential for 'the others', I.e. as the author alludes to at the end, us and them is no longer people with kids and people without, but those who stand either side of a once incomprehensible divide, those who have lost a parent and those who have not. I hope that you can guess already on which side of the abyss I stand, I lost my dad a year ago almost to the day and forgive me I don't mean it to be divisive or to mean that I think I have any badge of honour, I just mean that I cannot think of how I would have coped reading this book before my dad passed away. Would it have better prepared me, well maybe?
The book raises questions far more subtle and complicated than the title, as clever as it is in itself. Questions that you may or may not choose to ask yourself, which is something else I must explain further - great writing should make you question, but these are questions I have formulated myself in the face of an excellent book, the key one being am I more upset by loss, than by the way the loss unfolded.
I digress and more important for you to know is that, once I reached the more recent postscript, I found that there are some good updates but also the admission that some things remained untold and this, whilst perfectly natural and understandable did create a bit of an itch in my mind. Again, please don't mistake curiosity, as being the worst kind of voyeurism or downright nosiness, it just creates some intrigue, maybe, but you read it and you decide.
I think some people of the WWII generation and immediately afterwards too, seem/seemed like forces of nature. Also, you may well recognise in this book someone raging knowingly (or unknowingly) against the dying light and the caricature that these folk often seem to become in those embers' light and it makes me wonder if later generations have the same fate before them. Generations including my own Gen. X. What matters to me about that fate (or lack of), is, the question of whether anyone would consider my life and death bookworthy, oh and by the way (and) when did you last see your father?
3 people found this helpful
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prudence
4.0 out of 5 stars When did you last see your father?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 9, 2015
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I think this is a very brave book, A warts and all depiction of a difficult father/son relationship. The father, is a bumptious egotistic albeit well meaning GP who continues to dominate Blake, his son, long into adulthood. One senses he is expressing long years of swallowed rage. We learn in the second chapter of the book that Arthur had terminal bowel cancer and has not long to live. A graphic and harrowing portrayal of the progression of his illness interspersed with reminiscent chapters of family life follows. Blake is a Professor of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College and a poet. The reader is spared nothing and at times the book is very difficult to read. Some crude masculine type writing, ie. too much penises, s*** and masturbation in the bath, which seems gratuitous and rather too much intimate description of Arthur's actual death. Blake is working out artistically his difficult feelings and perhaps guilt about his father but to an outside it feels as if Arthur is left stripped of his dignity.

The book made for a stimulating and revealing discussion at my monthly book club and I feel although disturbing this is a heartfelt and beautifully written book. Well worth reading.
One person found this helpful
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K S Dhindsa
5.0 out of 5 stars We read to know we are not alone.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2016
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Last year I had the good fortune of bumping into the author Blake Morrison at the Derby Book Festival. Prior to our meeting I had not even heard of him nor his book about his father. It was a nice coincidence to have met him especially as I was a volunteer for the event. During the course of his talk he read a passage from 'And when...' which affected me quite deeply. Therefore i made sure to talk to him at the end of the event and tell him of my own experiences.

I had to speak to him because I too had lost my father and was in the process of writing a book about his death from suicide. On March 31st 2016 I released my book 'My Father & The Lost Legend of Pear Tree - Part One'. Only after the release of my book did I finally decide to read Blake's book about his own father.

The reason I waited so long to read this book was because I wanted to make sure I finished and released my book first. Having now finished reading Blake's book I'm glad I waited.

I can now understand how uncomfortable it can be for a reader to read something so personal. It would be quite easy to say that this book is not enjoyable because of its content. However that totally misses the point. As it is not the content that matters and how it is written, but the actual context.

Having also lost my father I can perfectly understand why people need to write and share their experiences with others. We don't do it for an audience. We do it to honour our fathers. They may not have always been perfect. But they made us the people we are.

More than anything we read these stories to know that we are not alone.

And if this book helps people come to terms with the death of a loved one. Then so be it.

Thank You Blake.
8 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The hardest book to read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2014
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This book - I read the blurb, and spent an age avoiding the buying of it. The title alone evoked an emotional reaction that caught me up in my own memories of dadda's last weeks. Read it I eventually did. I was always going to. I appreciated the clear style. I appreciated the care of it, the uncoiled confusion that death throws up, and the need to imprint the reality of the dying man on the page - to do him justice - To make a man live again through the words. It was wonderful, and profound. Did the book resonate with me? Most certainly, and although my experience of that bastard, grief, was not the same, there were many moments when I recognised the thoughts and feelings, so eloquently poured into the writing. Good writing elicits an emotional response in the reader. Blake Morrison is a good writer. Powerful, disturbing, and cathartic. I'm glad I found the courage to read this book. It will stay with me, I think, for a long, long time.
6 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2016
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Well written and moving in places. But its emphasis on private parts and private bodily accidents became a little tedious for this reader.
One person found this helpful
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