No comments about The Fin-De-Siecle Spirit: Walter Blackburn Harte and the American/Canadian Literary Milieu of the 1890s.

No comments about Tommy Douglas: The Road to Jerusalem (A Western Canadian Classic).

No comments about Flying For King and Commonwealth: The Adventures of a Canadian Pilot with the RAF in WWII:.

No comments about Crowfoot (The Canadians).

3 comments about My Father's Son: Memories of War and Peace.

1. This is another fine memoir from the author of "And No Birds Sang," "The Regiment," and "Aftermath," all books relating in part, to Farley Mowat's participation in the Second World War. (Although "The Regiment" does not specifically concern Mowat's adventures, much of its path is common to his own.) "My Father's Son" is also a tribute to his father Angus, and acknowledges the contribution made by him to Mowat's progress as a writer. Mowat senior was also a published author, but never achieved the pre-eminence of his son.

   Most of the book is concerned with the military details of Mowat's own experience, starting with his failed attempt to be inducted into the army due to his youthful appearance! He eventually succeeded in getting into the Hasty Ps, his father's regiment. So father and son were able to salute each other in uniform for a time, the one as a major, the other as a private. From there we are taken through the lengthy process of training, embarkation, arrival and billeting in England and the further long wait to go to war. Those who know Mowat's writing will enjoy this book for the usual reasons; there is an urgency to his writing and a singular facility for finding the right words, even for conveying the mundane. Those who are interested in Mowat the person, will as usual, find him hesitant to completely open up about his personal life. Never mind; he tells us a great deal about himself by leaving certain things unsaid. This is a good read if you can find it.




2. Profane and coarse, this book has all the finesse of trench warfare in a mortar attack. It is a book I'd rather my daughters didn't read, yet I feel that they MUST. Like so much of Farley Mowat's work, MY FATHER'S SON gives a chapter of Canadian history that was never taught in school. Brutal, obscene and probably unfair at times, it consists mostly of a collection of letters exchanged between a son and his parents separated by an ocean and a war. It is refreshingly free of political correctness. The blunt honesty of a 20 something nature lover crouched in a slit trench while he dispenses death and comrades die around him -- comes with the uncensored vocabulary of men and women caught in hell. Distilled from the stink of gunpowder and the scream of falling shells in the muddy trenches of Italy, it is 200 proof, uncut. This tea-totaler has gasped at every sip, taken offense at the language and morals, yet ranked it among the most worthwhile books he has ever read. It won't be found on the shelves of Bible Book Stores, with good reason. Yet if this writer had the authority, it would be back in print and mandatory reading before any Canadian could graduate from High School. Out of the many thousands of books I have read over the years, MY FATHER'S SON is a story with few peers. It doesn't fit any genre, it makes its own. It doesn't read smoothly and comfortably, it rends the fabric of cozy prejudice. It doesn't glorify war, it paints it as the hell it is. Perhaps more than anything else, it reminds me of the price my freedom cost, a reminder I don't always want to receive.

   This is a book that shouldn't be out of print, but copies are readily available on the used book market.




3. Profane and coarse, this book has all the finesse of trench warfare in a mortar attack. It is a book I'd rather my daughters didn't read, yet I feel that they MUST. Like so much of Farley Mowat's work, MY FATHER'S SON gives a chapter of Canadian history that was never taught in school. Brutal, obscene and probably unfair at times, it consists mostly of a collection of letters exchanged between a son and his parents separated by an ocean and a war. It is refreshingly free of political correctness. The blunt honesty of a 20 something nature lover crouched in a slit trench while he dispenses death and comrades die around him -- comes with the uncensored vocabulary of men and women caught in hell. Distilled from the stink of gunpowder and the scream of falling shells in the muddy trenches of Italy, it is 200 proof, uncut. This tea-totaler has gasped at every sip, taken offense at the language and morals, yet ranked it among the most worthwhile books he has ever read. It won't be found on the shelves of Bible Book Stores, with good reason. Yet if this writer had the authority, it would be back in print and mandatory reading before any Canadian could graduate from High School. Out of the many thousands of books I have read over the years, MY FATHER'S SON is a story with few peers. It doesn't fit any genre, it makes its own. It doesn't read smoothly and comfortably, it rends the fabric of cozy prejudice. It doesn't glorify war, it paints it as the hell it is. Perhaps more than anything else, it reminds me of the price my freedom cost, a reminder I don't always want to receive.
   
   This is a book that shouldn't be out of print, but copies are readily available on the used book market.

No comments about One Woman's War: A Canadian Reporter with the Free French (Goodread Biographies).

No comments about Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy.

No comments about Silver Chief: Lord Selkirk and the Scottish Pioneers of Belfast, Baldoon and Red River.

No comments about Champlain (Canadian University paperbooks).

5 comments about Tip of the Iceberg.

1. I thought this was just beautifully done. The father, both of the parents, are so well-drawn in it. And the alternation of northern lore with the author's personal story works perfectly: O'Connor's voice is so specific and true, you stay with him as he swings between eskimo legends, a natural history of the northern parts of the continent, and a wildly funny drunken bar room contretemps, easily finding meaningful connections between it all. The main story is wrenching with a beautiful payoff. Read this book!



2. What a fascinating story! And so well written. It brilliantly brings the author's world to life in all its wonderful and awful detail. The people are portrayed so artfully, both as individuals and collectively, that you feel you are among them. And the central story is beautifully touching.



3. O'Connor's beautiful language is as smooth as ice, as clean as fresh snow. This is a haunting, mysterious story of family secrets, which the author tells partly through direct memoir narrative and partly through metaphorical history and legend of the far north. I found the scenes of O'Connor's boyhood to be particularly well drawn: the ways in which he conjures child logic and perception are magical. Touching, strange, cathartic.



4. I work with the author. So much for full disclosure. And I had been told by another colleague before I read it that his book was wonderful. I wasn't prepared, though, to be overwhelmed, and I was: by the richness of its style, the honesty of its emotion, the entertainment of its anecdote, the relief of its humor amid pain and personal discovery. O'Connor travels two paths in search of answers about the emotional chill in his childhood home in Canada and the strange allure of cold climes. This yields on one side beautifully drawn pictures of smalltown life in which O'Connor's growing self-awareness and his tracking of family history coalesce. On the other, its offers perfectly rendered vignettes and lore about famous explorers, plain life and survival in the frigid north. Sometimes the juxtaposition seems impossibly apt, yet never forced. Along each trail run themes in varying proportions of love and hurt, sacrifice and estrangement, distance and intimacy, ambition and constraint. Through it all runs a classically balanced voice, blunt and eloquent and wry in confronting simple or hard truths. There is finally and happily about the book a physical irony in which I regretted its ending so soon but relished the knowledge that I could always find time to return time and again to a book as modest in size as it is grand in reward.



5. What a beautiful memoir! The setting, a small town in central Canada, was almost exotic to me. The writing is poem-like, clean and meditative. With his gentle voice, Mr. O'Connor takes you to the world of the sensitive boy whose longing and wonder towards his mysterious father is so vividly felt. The beautiful images in the book will remain with me for a long time. I highly recommend this special work.