Our Father Who Wasn't There

Can a memoir begin without memories? Can a father be invented? When David Carlin was only six months old, his father, Brian, died. It was the 1960s in isolated Western Australia, a place in which emotions were discreetly veiled, women did not attend funerals — and suicide was a sin. Brian became a mysteriously absent figure in David’s family story, hardly spoken of again.

As an adult, David yearns to conjure up his father, to uncover what led to his death at his own hand. Gradually, he begi...