Fathers (book)

Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing and Philip Roth.

[2] In the introduction to the book, the editor, Andre Gerard, suggests that personal writing about fathers is a relatively new phenomenon, one for which he proposes the name of patremoir, and he traces the origins of this kind of writing back to Edmund Gosse's Father and Son.

[3] According to Gerard, Gosse helped make it possible to speak intimately and openly about the father.

As the anthology unfolds, Gerard uses his introductions and his author biographies to create a meta-narrative.

He foregrounds the relationship between anthologist and reader, and he uses the essays and poems to call attention to how we shape the world and ourselves through the stories we tell.