23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bernard Cooper is a genius!, February 2, 2006
Who needs James Frey making up sensationalistic details and calling it memoir when we have Bernard Cooper whose brilliant writing makes ordinary experience fantastic, who slows down the rush of time that constitutes our everyday lives to find the most poignant, most telling, most-in-danger-of-being-lost-forever moments and, in the telling, renders them sublime? If you want to see what memoir at its best is capable of, read The Bill from My Father. In it, Cooper captures the universal mysteriousness of having parents: how could these people be both so like us, and so completely foreign to us? How could they seem like both the only parents we could possibly have, and as arbitrary as if the stork dropped us by accident on their doorstep? This book is hysterically funny, terribly sad, and heart-achingly beautiful. Bravo.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wow! Imagine having a father like this one...., February 13, 2006
This book only goes to show that a parent can often seem like a complete stranger, baffling and mysterious. Bernard Cooper's father was a true enigma and it is up to Cooper to try and make some sense out of his very difficult relationship with his father, a man who can be extremely mean and, yes, abusive...but Cooper refuses to give up on him. This is one intense book and I only hope the shadow James Frey (A Million little Pieces) has thrown over the memoir genre doesn't keep people from reading this one.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mr. Cooper, your love for your father shone throughout your prose, even as he billed you for $2 million and sued the family, June 4, 2006
Cooper published his memoir about his relationship with his father a full ten years after an editor suggested the topic. The editor was inspired by an essay Cooper published about his eccentric father, an essay the author desperately tried to hide from his father, for fear he would be enraged about its revelations. Cooper clearly agonized about his portrayal of his father--how do you talk about a flawed, angry, sarcastic, and eccentric man in a positive life, without demonizing him? Well, Mr. Cooper, if no one has said it to you yet, let me say it loud and clear: your love for your father shone throughout your prose, even as he billed you for $2 million dollars, even as he sued all your family members, and even as he wrote you off for minor offenses. As I reader, I came to love and respect your father, with all his quirks included.
Edward Cooper looms larger than life. His situation with the phone company reveals all--the author's father (Edward) had a thousand-dollar phone bill due to calling a televangelist recommended by his nurse/girlfriend, but he refused to pay it. He got embroiled in a months-long battle with the phone company, threatening litigation (Edward had been a famed Los Angeles divorce attorney back in the day). As a last resort, a phone company supervisor called Edward's son, our author, who was listened as an emergency contact on the account. The author wondered about the Edward's decision to list his sit-around-and-daydream/write son as a contact: "He couldn't have named a next door neighbor due to his long-standing feud with the neighbors on the right, because their sprinklers made the lawn soggy on his side of the property line, and with the neighbors on the left, because he was sure their automatic garage door opener vibrated powerfully enough to cause hairline cracks in our living room walls. Even if he's arrived at my name after excluding half of Los Angeles, I felt chosen, honored, exonerated." [p 77]
No summary of Bernard's complex relationship with his father and his decades-older brothers could do this book justice. Bernard was an accomplished writer before he embarked on the most challenging task of his career--portraying his father in the written word. All I can say it that you need to read this book, along with Josh Kilmer-Purcell's debut memoir.
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