Tonio: A Requiem Memoir

The father's first words are a howl of his son's name, as though he could call him up from the dead. Then the account becomes almost a police report. On the morning of Whit Sunday officers ring at the door: the couple's only child, twenty-one, has been knocked down by a car and is in hospital fighting for his life. People appear with their own names, as in a memoir. Yet the novelist, who has spent a career mastering reality on the page, finds that this death defeats him, and, burdened by growing guilt, he talks to the girl last seen with his son to trace the young man's final night.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

632 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Netherlands, 2010

First published

2011 by De Bezige Bij

Author's age

60 when first published

ISBN

9789023465720 (original)

9781925228076 (Scribe, Australia)

9781925106732 (Scribe, Australia)

More

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