Our Fathers

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Andrew O'Hagan has written a story which is a poignant and powerful reclamation of the past and a clear sighted gaze at our relationship with history, personal and public.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

On the heels of his successful first book, the acclaimed nonfiction title The Missing, journalist O'Hagan tries his hand at fiction. At the center of this book is Hugh Bawn, an ardent Socialist who planned and built high-rise flats in postwar Scotland. Years later, as he lies dying, his grandson Jamie returns home from England to reclaim the past he has tried unsuccessfully to leave behind. Spun by Jamie, this poignant tale reveals the lives of Hugh, Jamie, and Robert, Jamie's alcoholic father. Hugh's high-rises are destroyed one by one to make room for newer housing, much like the dreams of these three Scottish men. Eventually, Jamie realizes that the "child you have been will never desert you" and that memories may not always offer solace or solutions to present conflicts. A thoughtful book; recommended for large fiction collections.ÄFaye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon Libs., Eugene (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Scottish writer O'Hagan's first book, The Missing, was a well-received nonfictional compound of memoir and journalism on the subject of missing persons. Now, switching competently to fiction, he has produced a family melodrama and novel of social consciousness spanning four generations. Jamie Bawn's grandfather, Hugh, better known as "Mr. Housing" from his days as Labour's Public Works mastermind, is dying in a grim flat in one of the many Glasgow high-rises he erected in the name of progress. To Hugh's pride and dismay, Jamie has followed in his footsteps and, after briefly deserting Glasgow for Liverpool, is now assisting with the demolition of his grandfather's buildings, for the good of a new generation. As he nears death, Hugh is under investigation for cutting corners in the construction of his utopian towers, but Jamie knows that though the allegations are true, Hugh intended to pass his savings on to needy tenants. In a bedside vigil lasting many weeks, Jamie devotes himself to his grandfather, their sparring underlaid with prickly affection. Jamie also reminisces about his father, Robert, a crude and abusive drunkard who hated his son, and Hugh's mother, Effie, the family's first idealist, who led rent strikes in Glasgow's tenements during WWI. If Jamie and Hugh are too strong as individuals (and political animals) to reconcile completely, Jamie's watch over Hugh's last days gives him enough perspective to allow him to reestablish contact with his estranged father. O'Hagan's control over the Glaswegian idiom never slips as his characters tentatively get in touch with their feelings in most un-Scottish fashion. Skirting sentimentality and never indulging in it, Our Fathers deftly balances generational conflict with political struggles in a hardnosed, reform-minded Scotland. Author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

O'Hagan's first novel is a generational story that argues for the idealism of progress while simultaneously acknowledging the inherited faults of such an idealism and the faults of the dreamers themselves. It's a beautiful elegy for Scotland's postwar Labourites, men and women who felt ready and able to refashion their world along the socialist model. It is also a fine condemnation of the drunken, self-pitying Scottish sentiment that seems in vogue these days. The story covers three generations of the Bawn family: Jamie, the narrator and youngest, personifies the blend of New Labour and the deep ideals behind the Scottish renaissance. His father, Robert, is a ne'er-do-well alcoholic whose self-hatred nearly destroys the family. His grandfather Hugh, a heroic Labourite to the end, achieved the remarkable feat of building public housing in and around Glasgow back in the 1960s and '70s. Now, however, old Hugh is dying, and his cheaply made apartment towers, decrepit and on the brink of destruction, are the center of a scandal that threatens the old man's reputation. It is Jamie, the urban demolition expert, who must rescue the old man's reputation even as he sorts out his feelings regarding the family and the dream of progress. --Frank Caso

Kirkus Book Review

The first fiction from Glaswegian journalist O'Hagan (The Missing, 1996) a muted, melancholy, and gently touching tale of a son who returns home for the death of his grandfather and finds both the private, and the public, dimensions of a changing Scotland. 'Our fathers were made for grief . . . And all our lives we waited for sadness to happen,' observes Jamie Bawn, now in his early 30s. Growing up under Robert Bawn, a vicious, raging alcoholic, Jamie recounts his tortuous childhood, and his sustaining intimacy with his mother Alice, who suffered her husband for years. Finally, Jamie moved out, to live with his grandparents Hugh and Margaret. Hugh, Robert's father, was a 'visionary' urban planner who guided the construction of public-housing projects in 1970s Glasgow'high blocks of concrete and glass similar to those in the US from the era. Margaret was a good teacher, and Hugh was an energetic, ambitious father-figure for young Jamie, and years later, when Jamie receives word that Hugh is dying, he hurries from England to ease the way for both Hugh and Margaret. By now, Robert has disappeared, though Jamie is delighted to find Alice remarried and freshly independent. Hugh's dying, though, is not untroubled: an investigation is probing the old man's possible misappropriation of funds during his tenure as 'Mr. Housing,' and his beloved structures are being torn down to make way for the new. Which, Jamie finds, includes glimpses of Trainspotting Scotland, a polluted, history-soaked, seemingly exhausted land. But at Hugh's funeral, Robert turns up, then quickly disappears. Jamie follows and finds he's sobered up and now contentedly, modestly drives a taxi. After a reconciliation of sorts, the tale closes on a cautiously hopeful note. A relatively simple story, written with an entrancing, gentle eloquence: O'Hagan offers a deeply moving meditation on losses, both personal and historical, and on the tide of time through generations.