Dad's maybe book

Review by Booklist Review

National Book Award winner O'Brien became a father late in life and subsequently faced the sobering reality of his own mortality. One result is this love letter and book of advice to his sons, Timmy and Tad. It is full of amusing anecdotes and the many humorous and clever things the boys do and say. O'Brien also poignantly captures the trials of parenthood, from the feelings of helplessness while trying to soothe an incessantly crying infant to the universal frustrations of trying to understand a teenager. O'Brien is a thoughtful and close reader, and the strongest chapters are those focused on the reading assignments from which he hopes to draw and impart important life lessons through literary discussion. Interspersed throughout are memoiristic chapters sharing his fears and political awakening during his military service in Vietnam and passionately articulating his antiwar beliefs. Like most dads, O'Brien carries the hopes, fears, and dreams of his children in his own heart; on these pages he hopes to share the wisdom he has gleaned on his quest to fully embrace fatherhood.--Bill Kelly Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This tender memoir begins in 2003, when 58-year-old novelist O'Brien (The Things They Carried) has a one-year-old son and another one on the way. In the format of letters to his sons, he shares the joys of fatherhood, which are muted by the prospect that his children may know him only as an old man--or not know him at all ("Life is fragile. Hearts go still"). For the next 15 years, with the ashes of his father in an urn on his bookcase, O'Brien writes for his children what he wished his father had left him: "Some scraps of paper signed 'Love Dad'." O'Brien covers nights of colic, basketball games, and homework battles, but this is not a compendium of cute witticisms. He taps into the dark corners of his mind, sharing an analysis of, say, the parallels between the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 and his 1969 tour of duty in Vietnam's Quang Ngai Province. He then presents a well-reasoned argument for replacing the word "war" with the phrase "killing people, including children," and war's impact on culture. O'Brien concludes with a humorous, moving letter of instruction for his 100th birthday. With great candor, O'Brien succeeds in conveying the urgency parents may feel at any age, as they ready their children for life without them. (Oct.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Winner of the National Book Award in fiction for 1979's Going After Cacciato, O'Brien uses his deft skill of wordplay throughout this latest book. In 2003, after becoming a dad at an older age, O'Brien began to realize that he never really knew much about his own father. To alleviate this concern for his sons, he decided to write letters to them as if the boys were adults reading the letters many years later. This collection begins with O'Brien telling the story of his first son's initial month at home. The letters move on as the boys grow up, from fatherly concerns about his children's lack of aggressive competition in sports to paragraphs about silly conversations with them. He even provides advice on writing. Some of the letters are more serious, including sharing his personal experiences as a combatant in Vietnam and the aftermath of battle for veterans. The title is based on his son's suggestion that the letters could be collected in a "maybe book" written by his father. VERDICT Fans of parenting books, memoirs, and stories of Vietnam War veterans will find enjoyment in these heartfelt words.--Jason L. Steagall, Arapahoe Libraries, CO

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Ruminations and reminiscences of an authornow in his 70sabout fatherhood, writing, and death.O'Brien (July, July, 2002, etc.), who achieved considerable literary fame with both Going After Cacciato (1978) and The Things They Carried (1990), returns with an eclectic assembly of pieces that grow increasingly valedictory as the idea of mortality creeps in. (The title comes from the author's uncertainty about his ability to assemble these pieces in a single volume.) He begins and ends with a letter: The initial one is to his first son (from 2003); the terminal one, to his two sons, both of whom are now teens (the present). Throughout the book, there are a number of recurring sections: "Home School" (lessons for his sons to accomplish), "The Magic Show" (about his long interest in magic), and "Pride" (about his feelings for his sons' accomplishments). O'Brien also writes often about his own father. One literary figure emerges as almost a member of the family: Ernest Hemingway. The author loves Hemingway's work (except when he doesn't) and often gives his sons some of Papa's most celebrated stories to read and think and write about. Near the end is a kind of stand-alone essay about Hemingway's writings about war and death, which O'Brien realizes is Hemingway's real subject. Other celebrated literary figures pop up in the text, including Elizabeth Bishop, Andrew Marvell, George Orwell, and Flannery O'Connor. Although O'Brien's strong anti-war feelings are prominent throughout, his principal interest is fatherhoodspecifically, at becoming a father later in his life and realizing that he will miss so much of his sons' lives. He includes touching and amusing stories about his toddler sons, about the sadness he felt when his older son became a teen and began to distance himself, and about his anguish when his sons failed at something.A miscellany of paternal pride (and frustration) darkened by the author's increasing realizations of his mortality. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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A Letter to My Son Dear Timmy,   A little more than a year ago, on June 20, 2003, you dropped into the world, my son, my first and only child--a surprise, a gift, an eater of electrical cords, a fertilizer factory, a pain in the ass, and a thrill in the heart.   Here's the truth, Timmy. Boy, oh, boy, do I love you. And, boy, do I wish I could spend the next fifty or sixty years with my lips to your cheek, my eyes warming in yours.   But as you wobble into your sixteenth month, it occurs to me that you may never really know your dad. The actuarial stuff looks grim. Even now, I'm what they call an "older father," and in ten years, should I have the good luck to turn sixty-eight, I'll almost certainly have trouble keeping up with you. Basketball will be a problem. And twenty years from now . . . well, it's sad, isn't it?   When you begin to know me, you will know an old man.   Sadder yet, that's the very best scenario. Life is fragile. Hearts go still. So now, just in case, I want to tell you about your father, the man I think I am. And by that I mean not just the graying old coot you may vaguely remember, but the guy who shares your name and your blood and half your DNA, the Tim who himself was once a Timmy.   Above all, I am this: I am in love with you. Pinwheeling, bedazzled, aching love. If you know nothing else, know that you were adored by your dad.   In many ways, a man is what he yearns for, and while it may never happen, I yearn to walk a golf course at your side. I yearn for a golden afternoon in late August when you will sink a tough twelve-footer to beat me by a stroke or two. I yearn to shake your hand and say, "Nine more holes?"   I yearn to tell you, man to man, about my time as a soldier in a faraway war. I want to tell you what I saw and what I did. I yearn to hear you say, "It's okay, Dad. All that's over."   So many other things, too. Right now, as I watch you sleep, I imagine scattering good books around the house--in the bathrooms, on the kitchen counter, on the floor beside your bed--and I imagine being there to see you pick one up and turn that first precious page. I long to see the rapture on your face. (Right now, you eat books.)   I yearn to learn from you. I want to be your teacher, yes, but I also want to be your student. I want to be taught, again and again, what I've already started to know: that a grown man can find pleasure in the sound of a happy squeal, in the miraculous sound of approaching feet.   I yearn to watch you perform simple acts of kindness and generosity. I yearn to witness your first act of moral courage. I yearn to hear you mutter, however awkwardly, "Yeah, yeah, I love you, too," and I yearn to believe you will mean it.   It's hard to accept as I watch you now, so lighthearted and purely good, so ignorant of gravestones, but, Timmy, you are in for a world of hurt and heartache and sin and doubt and frustration and despair. Which is to say you are in for being alive. You will do fine things, I know, but you will also do bad things, because you are wholly human, and I wish I could be there, always, to offer forgiveness.   More than that, I long for the day when you might also forgive me. I waited too long, Timmy. Until the late afternoon of June 20, 2003, I had defined myself, for better and for worse, by the novels and stories I had written. I had sought myself in sentences. I had loved myself only insofar as I loved a chapter or a scene or a scrap of dialogue. This is not to demean my life or my writing. I do hope you will someday read the books and stories; I hope you will find my ghost in those pages, my best self, the man I would wish to be for you. Call it pride, call it love, but I dare to hope that you will commit a line or two to memory, for in the dream-space between those vowels and consonants is the sound of your father's voice, the kid I once was, the man I now am, the old man I will soon become. Excerpted from Dad's Maybe Book by Tim O'Brien All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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