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Review
'This lovely, loving memoir is an attempt to quantify that legacy, written with effortless humour and grace.' -- Metro >> 'It's often very funny, always very interesting, and soaked in a wistful sort of melancholy that sometimes deepens into a compelling sadness... Frayn has written books that make a bigger bang than this, but none so that is so touching.' -- Andrew Motion, Guardian >> 'A profound delight... With deft, witty touches, he resurrects the past.' -- Charlotte Moore, Spectator >> 'My Father's Fortune shows him at his very best. He expresses in a few words what it would take other writers several paragraphs to convey... And of course he is also extremely funny, possessing a quietly ironic tone that is pleasantly teasing and often self-mocking...the ease and fluidity of Frayn's prose... In the end, Frayn has written a letter of love not just to his father, but to his mother too.' -- Elizabeth Day, Observer >> 'A profoundly affecting study of family myths and legends.' -- DJ Taylor, Financial Times >> 'Forever alert to the inner processes of art and mind Frayn from time to time cuts away and nips backstage to show how the memoir machinery works. Yet, almost miraculously, this keen self-awareness never compromises the deep poignancy - and the rich comedy - of the story he has to tell. Here, as always, that's part of the trick of it for Frayn.' -- Boyd Tonkin, Independent >> 'What Frayn presents us with is an effort to establish his own identity by exploring "the unknown place" represented in his origins. It is, as one would expect from so accomplished a writer, beautifully done... he is wonderfully good on atmosphere.' -- New Statesman >> '[A] vividly written and moving memoir.' -- Evening Standard >> 'The comic gifts of one of our best contemporary writers are not wasted in this memoir. A very English story told in a very English way.' -- Daily Telegraph >> 'Marvellous memoir ... a writer who has long been one of our most engrossingly inquiring minds, Frayn has never written with more searching brilliance than in this quest for his past.' -- --Sunday Times 'Our Choice'
'Heartfelt memoir.' -- The Times >> 'Frayn's beautifully written memoir of suburban family life is both funny and deeply moving.' --Guardian
'Heartfelt memoir.' -- The Times >> 'Frayn's beautifully written memoir of suburban family life is both funny and deeply moving.' --Guardian
Review
“After the brilliant plays—both comic and cerebral—and the subtle novels, one of our best contemporary writers has made the family memoir his own. Not a line, still less a thought, is stale or predictable.”
—Anne Chisholm, "The Daily Telegraph "(UK) “Genuinely delving, yet decently guarded, "My Father’s Fortune" is often very funny and soaked in a wistful sort of melancholy that deepens into a compelling sadness. Frayn has written books that make a bigger bang, but none that is so touching.”
—Andrew Motion, "The Guardian "(UK) “Ranging from comic star turns to passages of piercingly lucid melancholy, "My Father’s Fortune" adroitly modulates between humor and tragedy, ruefulness and celebration, intellectual keenness and elegiac depths of feeling. A writer who has long been one of our most engrossingly inquiring minds, Frayn has never written with more searching brilliance than in this quest for his p
—Anne Chisholm, "The Daily Telegraph "(UK) “Genuinely delving, yet decently guarded, "My Father’s Fortune" is often very funny and soaked in a wistful sort of melancholy that deepens into a compelling sadness. Frayn has written books that make a bigger bang, but none that is so touching.”
—Andrew Motion, "The Guardian "(UK) “Ranging from comic star turns to passages of piercingly lucid melancholy, "My Father’s Fortune" adroitly modulates between humor and tragedy, ruefulness and celebration, intellectual keenness and elegiac depths of feeling. A writer who has long been one of our most engrossingly inquiring minds, Frayn has never written with more searching brilliance than in this quest for his p
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Got really hooked on Michael Frayns books after reading Spies, which was such a beautifully written book filled with
nostalgia but not overly sentimental. This book I feel in written much the same vein and it evokes such vivid recollections you can almost smell the time and places it was written about.
If you enjoyed Spies this will not disappoint.
nostalgia but not overly sentimental. This book I feel in written much the same vein and it evokes such vivid recollections you can almost smell the time and places it was written about.
If you enjoyed Spies this will not disappoint.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
How to review this marvellous, honest memoir without divulging too many story-salient facts? Frayn writes with an effortlessly light touch, but as we read, we learn that he has carried out considerable research, in registry offices, censuses and from family members. Charmer Tom Frayn turns out to be a stoic, nothing less, and heroic, too. To die practically penniless, yet having paid his way, given the world Michael and his sister, and smiled throughout, is truly a life worth saluting. And Michael Frayn - for all his scholarliness - relates all the pain, the love, the loss, and acknowledges his debts. The result is a heartfelt tribute. Wonderful.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This memoir creeps up on you. At first I found it hard to separate the characters and stories of all the parents, grandparents and other relatives that were floating around at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, but I suppose that's an aspect of lots of biographies. Slowly, though, definitive people emerge from the mist, and of course, Mr Frayn senior is the most colourful. The first question for the reader is why the title focuses on him alone rather than his wife as well, but the end of Part One answers that with a bang. Part Two is an effective social history of post-war England, and as his father's hearing starts to fade you get a real sense of Michael's relationship with him strengthening - through family bereavements, marriages, education, adolescence, careers, and eventually, new lives. Those are the 'events' but then there are all the father/son emotions - expectation, ambition, disappointment, embarrassment and pride. The real success, though, is the way the book tells all our stories, and the fact that the reader starts out perhaps a little indifferent to the subject of the tale, but ends up feeling a real sense of loss when he dies. That sense of not fully appreciating someone until it's (almost) too late couldn't be expressed more powerfully.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Disappointing
Disappointing. I wanted to read this book becasue I had particularly enjoyed 'Headlong'and 'Noises Off' but I found the book dull. Read more
Published 2 months ago by pam
My Father's Fortune
This is a memoir by Michael Frayn of his father
together with childhood memories.
I found the first part of the book tentative
but it got better when I began... Read more
together with childhood memories.
I found the first part of the book tentative
but it got better when I began... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mrs. H. N. Robinson
Unanswered and unasked questions
I am four years older than Frayn. I have attempted to write about my father so I was interested in Frayn's effort. Superficially his story and mine are very similar. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Dr. P. M. Symmons
A BRITISH PROUST
This is a factual account of Michael Frayn's father, and of his own early life. Everyone may have at least one book in them, and many of those books will be family memoirs; but... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Stephen Cooper
Fascinating
My Father's Fortune: A Life
Although this is ostensibly the story of Frayn's father's life, it is really about Frayn himself. Read more
Although this is ostensibly the story of Frayn's father's life, it is really about Frayn himself. Read more
Published 5 months ago by R. Davies
Tribute
Pretty much everything Michael Frayn does is moving and thought provoking at once. Here again he achieves this by revealing the strength and greatness of his father, reflecting on... Read more
Published 6 months ago by jfitzg
Totally absorbing
A totally absorbing book which took me on a journey back in time, into the spirit and heart of one of our finest novelists. In turns deeply moving and hilariously funny. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Madelaine Cooper Mcv
English Reserve
Whilst Michael Frayn's book My Father's Fortune is very well written and very readable by the end of the book I neither knew Michael Frayn or his father, I only learnt what they... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Michael Stern
Excellent Service
This book came quickly and was in excellent condition as described on the website. I would certainly use this source again
Published 7 months ago by BarbaraS
Best of Frayn
I read this thinking it would be a conventional sort of family history, a cruise through the census records etc. How wrong I was! Read more
Published 9 months ago by D. Cheshire
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