Father & I: A Memoir

By Carlo Gébler

Book Overview

Carlo G bler's childhood was one of prohibitions: no sweets, no comics, no toys, no friends to the house to play; a childhood dominated by his father Ernest G bler's belief in discipline and Joseph Stalin. Ernest G bler was a writer whose novel The Plymouth Adventure was made into a film starring Spencer Tracy. But when Carlo G bler's mother--Edna O'Brien--eclipsed her husband's literary success, Ernest G bler convinced himself that he was the writer of her books, a strain which broke the family up. After years of silence, Carlo finally discovered both the truth about his father and feelings which he had not known himself capable of. "You cannot change the past, but with understanding you can sometimes draw the poison out of it."

Born in Dublin in 1954, Carlo G bler has written nine books, dramatisations for theatre, and radio.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0714530646
• ISBN13: 9780714530642
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers
• Length: 405 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Daddy Dearest

For a nation obsessed with memoirs (and I count myself among the obsessed) it's surprising that this title isn't generating more attention. Beautifully, sparely written by the son of writers Edna O'Brien and Ernest Gebler, this memoir is an engrossing account of life with a cold, emotionally brutal father who, post-divorce, does his best to set the kids against their infinitely more loving, kind and (much to her ex-husband's despair) successful mom. Gebler's father is less deliberately cruel than blind to his shortcomings as a father and a human being. Still, his ignorance doesn't stop the reader from despising him until, by the book's end, the same transformation of consciousness the author underwent takes hold in the reader. Pity replaces contempt, as we grow along with Gebler into someone who comes to understand, and even forgive, the unforgivable. All of it rendered in a lean and quick prose that's flawless but never showy. Far and away the best of the current crop of memoirs.