"A world war fought on three fronts by a young artillery officer; a courtship, marriage, and forced separation in a hesitant, old-fashioned English style; a sudden, devastating upheaval in the author's own life – Jonathan Raban deploys the skills of an accomplished novelist to braid these elements into a beautiful, compelling memoir drawn from his parents' wartime love letters. He is a master, as he has shown in his legendary travel writing, of summoning place and people with vivid economy. Haunting
Father and Son is an exquisite, sometimes lunatic tension between powerful emotions and carnage on one side, and on the other, the conventional codes of what must remain unsaid. This, Raban's final work, is a gorgeous achievement."
–Ian McEwan, author of Lessons "[Raban is] always a lucid, perceptive writer. . . . His experiences as a patient will ring true to anyone who has spent significant time in the hospital. . . . [
Father and Son is] a touching farewell from a careful, thoughtful observer of life."
–Kirkus Reviews "This exceptional posthumous memoir . . . runs on two equally rewarding tracks. . . . Raban catalogs 'the catastrophic progress of one's own deterioration' with warmth and intellectual rigor, effortlessly weaving together personal history and literary critique. Tirelessly researched and told with remarkable candor, this often breathtaking memoir is a worthy successor to Raban's hero's."
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)