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My Father's Ghost Hardcover – September 30, 2002

by Suzy McKee Charnas (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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The Nebula Award-winning author chronicles her relationship with her father during the last seventeen years of his life, tracing the changing dynamics of a parent-child relationship transformed by the aging process. 17,500 first printing.
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  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Tarcher
  4. Publication date
    September 30, 2002
  5. Reading age
    18 years and up
  6. Dimensions
    5.86 x 1.13 x 8.6 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1585421855
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1585421855
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charnas's memoir of her father Robin's demise begins with the flashbulb moment where she realizes he can't live independently anymore. She asks him to read back the telephone number she has just given him and he responds simply "I didn't get it... I can't see to write it down." Charnas recalls, "I got a sinking feeling. My father was living in a loft on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. I now lived in an adobe house in Albuquerque. My husband and I were launching new careers.... There was no money to spare for flying back and forth to New York." Charnas, a Nebula Award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist, barely hesitates before inviting Robin, whom she hardly knew as a child, to come live in the "in-law" cottage next to her own home. What follows is a moving, thoughtful, sometimes tedious but never sentimental account of how daughter and father get to know each other in middle and old age. Book One lingers a bit too long on Charnas's childhood and opaque, rambling excerpts from Robin's journals. It's clear that she's just trying to paint a clear picture of her curmudgeonly father. But Book Two, which chronicles Robin's time in a nursing home, is much stronger. Here, Robin's unique combination of eccentricity and strength speaks for itself, especially when he's quietly holding hands with his new girlfriend, Jane. Charnas's story is bound to be a guidebook and an inspiration for anyone caring for aging parents. (Oct. 1) Forecast: Blurbs from Tony Hillerman and Peter Straub could make this popular among baby boomers.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

When science fiction author Charnas realizes her artist-father can no longer remain alone in his Greenwich Village loft, she has him live with her and her husband in an "in-law" adobe on their Albuquerque property. That final homecoming, far from his beloved New York, is the focus of his daughter's memoir, one rich with flashbacks to her baffling divorce, her childhood, and her sister's relationship with their father, the most difficult man in her life. In the present, Charnas' father refuses to wash his long, greasy hair; he fears that to do so will result in baldness, but what does result is cradle cap, a scalp infection associated with poor hygienic care of infants. He manages to drive--barely--and relies increasingly on Charnas for trips to the grocery store within the narrow time frame when he will be sure to find blueberry muffins there. Throughout, Charnas' beautifully written rendering of this father-daughter duo's humanity holds our attention on the sometimes elusive, often baffling bonds that make a family. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tarcher; F First Edition (September 30, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1585421855
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1585421855
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.86 x 1.13 x 8.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

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Suzy McKee Charnas

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
7 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

D. Broots
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent memoir about aging parents and being their adult child!
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2014
This book would be great for anyone who has an aging parent. It's "My Father's Ghost," by Suzy McKee Charnas, best known as a science fiction/fantasy writer, about her experiences with her father over a long period of time, up until his death. She and her father were basically estranged for most of her childhood and much of her adult life, but when Charnas was about forty and her father in his mid-sixties, she found herself with the responsibility of helping her dad find a new place to live when he lost his apartment in New York City. Because she and her husband had relocated to New Mexico and had a small guest house right outside their back door, she invited her father to move out there with them.

The book is a memoir, detailing their often prickly relationship, one that included the process of getting to know each other as real people sharing a physical space, not simply as an aging parent and adult child. In later chapters, Charnas discusses her father's physical and mental decline, and how she struggled to integrate his increasing needs with her own needs, and those of her husband and grown children. Finally, she tells us about choosing a nursing home, dealings with doctors and physical therapists, communicating with Social Security and insurance companies, and eventually matters of signing DNR forms, her father's death, and then deciding what to do with his body. I highly recommend it not only for people in similar situations, but also simply as a memoir, in general, as we learn a good bit about the author and how she has navigated her way through life as an author, wife, mother, sister and child, and having her aging father becoming an unexpected fellow passenger for about twenty years.
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Amy A. Hanson
5.0 out of 5 stars Our fathers' ghosts, too
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2003
This is a story about real life. An artist father of a writer daughter. A father who walked away when she was eight. A father who in his last decade of life became dependant on his daughter, the stranger.

Don't expect saccharine, 'cause there ain't any. No sugar cookies and milk, this is molasses and tea: bitter, dark, and poignant. Revelations, yes, but not of the TV sitcom kind, which are easily provoked and resolved in half an hour. This is deep history, it's the sand in the backyard and the gnarled old olive tree.

It's a story told with exasperation and something like love. A story told brilliantly. Thought-provoking reading for those of us with parents heading into their last decade -- parents with whom we share a bad history.

Here's a woman who offers refuge to a man who is going blind, and who holds a menial job in a restaurant. She offers him a free home in the sunshine, and the chance to do art.

He arrives on her doorstep and proceeds to be exactly the same man he's always been: cantankerous, rude, and skeptical. He doesn't do any art -- not by choice, as it turns out. He doesn't have the emotional resources to make friends and have his own life. Heck, he doesn't even have the ability to make his own dinner.

It's a fascinating story, and Charnas is an amazing writer. We get an unvarnished portrait of this man, his daughter, and a series of glimmers into why he left her mother, and why he's such a crank. If another living situation would have been ideal, well that's too bad because they're caught in the vise-grip of American medical economics. He's here to stay, like it or not. Then when his health fails completely, maybe he's too sick to stay home, but maybe not sick enough for Medicare to pay for a bed in a nursing home. Do she and her husband bankrupt themselves to give him adequate care? Charnas' livelihood hangs in the balance, not to mention her sanity.

Who hasn't been there? And if we haven't been there, we will be soon. For those of us with difficult parents, it's enlightening to see how one woman's choices begin to unfold. She's no angel of the house -- her own discomfort comes through, and she combats it with exasperated humor.

MY FATHER'S GHOST left me with a lasting understanding of tradeoffs. Good parts, bad parts. What I could stand, and what I couldn't. I can't make the same choices she did -- unless, like Charnas, I have to. But the whatever happens, at least I'll go in girded.
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C. Penn
5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant and honest memoir -- Very highly recommended
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2002
Suzy McKee Charnas always had a difficult relationship with her father Robin McKee who walked out when she was eight. Robin left behind 40 black bound journals containing mostly left-wing political ranting and long discussions on painters and paint, along with an occasional wisecrack. From her few childhood memories, thoughts gleaned from the journals, and the time from when Robin was 63 until his death at 81, Charnas constructs a haunting memoir. MY FATHER'S GHOST becomes a reflective, honest, and at times painful account of the journey from aging to dying.
Robin eked out a living in Greenwich Village maintaining sporadic contact with his children. He was a man of extraordinary intelligence who had lived in true Bohemian poverty. Indeed, Robin sacrificed all for his good taste and artistic talent even while his career was unsuccessful. Then one day during a phone call with Charnas, Robin indicates that he is going blind. His daughter encourages him to retire, moving him to Albuquerque, New Mexico to live in a nearby "in-law" cottage. It seemed like a golden opportunity to get her lost father back -- a second chance for a father-daughter relationship.
Charnas weathers the difficulties of living close to an aging parent with grace. She struggles with meals, housekeeping, and personal hygiene, and she worries over health issues and finances. During the first half of the book, her father coexists nearby, but the second half of the book confronts the inevitable deteriorating health and nursing homes. Throughout the memoir, Charnas recounts challenges, the pain, and the guilt of coping with an aging parent. Surprisingly, Robin finds his own second chances when he moves into a nursing home, lending the conclusion unexpected beauty and hope.
Having had my own difficult relationship with a father who absented himself early in life, I read Charnas with eagerness and sympathy as she confronts the inevitable challenges of piecing together a relationship built mostly of hope and a few bedraggled memories. The contradictions of Robin's personality can prove both incredibly aggravating and highly amusing. Charnas weaves together excerpts from her father's journals and their shared story with remarkable skill, resulting in an absorbing narrative that readers will find enthralling. MY FATHER'S GHOST comes very highly recommended.
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