My Father’s Fortune
‘It took him quite a long time to accept that I had some other qualities, abilities, to write and so forth, which in his eyes never really made up for lack of sporting ability, but eventually we found some sort of common ground.’
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‘An unknown place.’ This was what Michael Frayn’s children called the shadowy landscape of the past from which their family had emerged. In this book he sets out to rediscover that lost land before all trace of it finally disappears beyond recall. As he tries to see it through the eyes of its inhabitants – his parents and some of the others who shaped his life – he comes to realise how little he himself ever knew or understood about them.
This is above all the story of his father, the quick-witted boy from a poor and struggling family, who overcame so many disadvantages and shouldered so many burdens to make a go of his life; who found happiness, had it snatched away from him in a single instant, and in the end, after many difficulties, perhaps found it again.
Father and son were in some odd ways ridiculously alike, in others ridiculously different; and the journey back down the corridors of time is sometimes comic, sometimes painful, as Michael Frayn comes to see how much he has inherited from his father – and makes one or two surprising discoveries about both of them along the way.
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In this extended interview, recorded by George Miller, Michael Frayn talks about his childhood in leafy Surrey during the war and his relationship with his father, so memorably and movingly portrayed in his Costa-shortlisted (and winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize) memoir, My Father’s Fortune, which is available now in paperback.
He also talks about the impact of the loss of his mother when he was twelve and his early ambitions to be a writer.
October 11th, 2011 at 1:47 pm
Great book