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list price: $17.95
edition:Paperback
category: Family & Relationships
published: Oct 2016
ISBN:9781551526621
publisher:
Arsenal Pulp Press
Description
Charles Demers is a thirtysomething comedian and the author of three books; George Bowering is eighty, Canada's first poet laureate, and the author of more than eighty books. Charlie and George are also the best of friends. And the fathers of daughters.
In this unique book of correspondence, these two men from different generations write to each other about the burdens, anxieties, and singular joys of parenthood. The letters begin as Charlie and his wife discover they will become parents; he expresses his hopes and fears of impending fatherhood, compounded by his OCD and his own father's illness, while George recalls his experiences raising a daughter in the 1970s and his anxieties about bringing a child into a troubled world.
Together, their thoughtful, funny, candid missives reveal what fathers know (or don't know) about raising daughters, as well as themselves and each other. Their combined observations make for a passionate, funny, and moving portrait of fatherhood in all its imperfect, beautiful glory.
About the Authors
George Bowering is a distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian and tireless supporter of fellow writers. He has authored more than one hundred books and chapbooks, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography and fiction for young readers. His writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese and Romanian. His novel, Burning Water, won the Governor General’s award for fiction and his memoir, Pinboy, was short-listed for the BC National Award for non-fiction in 2013. George Bowering is a two-time recipient of the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s top literary prize, and served as Canada’s first Parliamentary Poet Laureate. He is an Officer of both the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia.
Charles Demers is an author, comedian, voice actor, and playwright. He is one of the most frequently returning stars of CBC Radio’s smash-hit comedy The Debaters, with a weekly listening audience of 750,000. His collection of essays, Vancouver Special (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009), was shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Non- Fiction Prize. He is also the author of The Horrors (Douglas & McIntyre, 2015), Property Values (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018) and Primary Obsessions (Douglas & McIntyre, 2020). The latter is Demers’ first book in the Doctor Annick Boudreau Mystery Series, for which he draws upon his own long-time experience with cognitive behavioural therapy. Demers lives in Vancouver, BC, with his wife and daughter.
Editorial Reviews
An engagingly written look at fatherhood. Despite an almost fifty year age difference, Charles and George align on most aspects of what it's like to be a father, how marriage gets affected, and what babies are really like.
-The Ormsby Review
Confident and amusing, poignant and thoughtful ... Strong undercurrents--of dread, anxiety, and fear--contribute the sense that funny episodes aside, parenting isn't for the faint of heart.
-Macleans
A thoughtful, amusing book which should spark a lot of conversations about fathering, daughters, housework and diapers. -Vancouver Sun
