The Bill from My Father - by Bernard Cooper (Paperback)

About the Book

In this ambitious and searching work, Cooper crafts a memoir that illuminatesthe enduring, intersecting mysteries of family, memory, and identity.

Book Synopsis

Edward Cooper is a hard man to know.Dour and exuberant by turns, his moods dictate the always uncertain climate of the Cooper household. Balding, octogenarian, and partial to a polyester jumpsuit, Edward Cooper makes an unlikely literary muse. But to his son he looms larger than life, an overwhelming and baffling presence.

Edward's ambivalent regard for his son is the springboard from which this deeply intelligent memoir takes flight. By the time the author receives his inheritance (which includes a message his father taped to the underside of a safe deposit box), and sees the surprising epitaph inscribed on his father's headstone, The Bill from My Father has become a penetrating meditation on both monetary and emotional indebtedness, and on the mysterious nature of memory and love.

Review Quotes

"[Cooper has] a richely unique voice...one of the loveliest memoirs to come along in a great while."

-- Kevin Smokler, San Francisco Chronicle

"Cooper is a memoirist in the Tobias Wolff vein, and [The Bill from My Father] is a rueful, self-effacing, yet dazzlingly precise affair."

-- Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

"Honest and keen-eyed...a nuanced, pained portrayal of how -- and often how awkwardly -- men love."

-- Norah Vincent, The New York Times

"This memoir amazes."

-- Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

About the Author

Bernard Cooper has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, and literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment of the Arts.

He has published two memoirs, Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum, as well as a novel, A Year of Rhymes, and a collection of short stories, Guess Again. His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, Gentleman's Quarterly, and The Paris Review and in several volumes of The Best American Essays. He lives in Los Angeles and is the art critic for Los Angeles Magazine.