The Bill from My Father

by Bernard Cooper (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $3.25

  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, clad in the polyester jumpsuit that has become the uniform of his retirement - he makes an unlikely literary muse.

  Bernard Cooper and his father have found themselves the last surviving members of the family that once included his mother, Lillian, and three older brothers. Edward Cooper made his name as a divorce attorney in LA. An expert at 'the dissolution of human relationships', he is slowly succumbing to dementia. As Bernard attempts to forge a coherent picture of his family history, he uncovers peculiar documents detailing Edward's lawsuits against other family members, including his newly widowed daughters-in-law, and recalls the itemized invoice his father once sent him for the total cost of his upbringing, for the sum of two million dollars.

  By the time Bernard receives his inheritance (including a message his father sticky-taped to the underside of a safe-deposit box), and sees the surprising epitaph inscribed on his father's headstone, The Bill from My Father has become a penetrating meditation on both monetary indebtedness, and on the mysterious nature of memory and love.

  '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