The Bill From My Father

Edward Cooper was a hard man to know. Dour and exuberant by turns, his moods dictated the always-uncertain climate of the Cooper household. Now – balding, octogenarian – he makes an unlikely literary muse. But to his now middle-aged son, he looms larger than life, an overwhelming, baffling presence. Edward Cooper made his name as a divorce attorney in LA whose cases were devoured by the tabloids. Now, he is slowly succumbing to dementia. As Bernard attempts to forge a coherent picture of his family history, he uncovers Edward's lawsuits against other family members, and recalls the itemized invoice his father once sent him for the total cost of his upbringing, for the sum of two million dollars. 'Bernard Cooper's The Bill from My Father is a glorious cornucopia of love and pain. Not only is Cooper an exemplary writer but he can parse an emotion down to its most resonant note. This memoir amazes' Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones 'Cooper is a beautiful writer . . . his book is in a class of its own . . . Somehow, this is a story about all parents and their grown-up children and how they manage to keep going through all the insults and mixed messages and botched attempts to express love' Observer 'Cooper's wry, rueful memoir of a lifetime's wrangling with the old guy is memorably moving, emotionally disciplined, devilish in the detail and smartly funny. Read it now' The Times

About the Author :
Bernard Cooper has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, and literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. His work has appeared in Harper's, GQ and the Paris Review. He lives in Los Angeles and is the art critic for Los Angeles magazine.

Review :
"[Cooper has] a richely unique voice...one of the loveliest memoirs to come along in a great while."-- Kevin Smokler, "San Francisco Chronicle" "Cooper is a memoirist in the Tobias Wolff vein, and "[The Bill from My Father]" is a rueful, self-effacing, yet dazzlingly precise affair."-- Michael Upchurch, "The Seattle Times" "Honest and keen-eyed...a nuanced, pained portrayal of how -- and often how awkwardly -- men love."-- Norah Vincent, "The New York Times" "This memoir amazes."-- Alice Sebold, author of "The Lovely Bones" "ÝCooper has¨ a richely unique voice...one of the loveliest memoirs to come along in a great while." -- Kevin Smokler, "San Francisco Chronicle" "This memoir amazes." -- Alice Sebold, author of "The Lovely Bones" "A masterful, compelling, and supremely entertaining portait. Some books are easily forgotten, but not this one. I will never be able to look at a coat of arms, a sheet of onionskin, or a cemetary again without feeling the need to tell someone about Edward Cooper." -- Mark Salzman