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In a Father's Place
The short stories of Christopher Tilghman are set against the enroached-upon yet still-expansive landscapes of our continent. From a Montanan widow who marries her ranch hand to the aging patriarch of an old Maryland family on the Eastern Shore, Tilghman's characters bring to life the trials and bonds of belonging to one another—as lovers, as friends, as fathers. This collection of stories, the author's first book, is a deeply American work—composed with a keen sense of our past and our predicaments—but also a celebration of our resiliency. Writing in The New York Times Book Review , John Casey called In a Father's Place "a wonderful surprise . . . a beautiful book, making emotions as vivid and rich in perspective as a loved landscape."
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
71 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Tilghman
25 books63 followersChristopher Tilghman is the author of two short-story collections, In a Father’s Place, and The Way People Run, and three novels, The Right-Hand Shore, Mason’s Retreat and Roads of the Heart. Currently the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, he and his wife, the writer Caroline Preston, live in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 22, 2011
Here is my original review from the San Francisco Chronicle in May 1990:
The best thing about ''In a Father's Place,'' Christopher Tilghman's wonderful collection of seven stories, is that it does not really work together as an impeccably fitted whole.
Tilghman writes with precision, grace and an honesty that threatens to topple his astonishingly balanced storytelling. Yet he understands that a slightly mismatched batch of stories, as this is, has considerable rewards.
The title story, ''In a Father's Place,'' shares with other stories an attention to the strains and sacrifices in the relationship between fathers and sons, particularly as the sons grow into adulthood.
But in this story, set like some others along the Chesapeake Bay, the son is a young writer at work on an angry, score-settling novel about his father. This is a clear tip-off from Tilghman that he's mining the vein of autobiography.
For the most part, this unabashed display of writing what you know works beautifully. Tilghman lets the stories flow from him, rather than trying to settle scores through his stories. ''On the Rivershore,'' which opens the book, appears to grow from a genuine childhood memory that paints all too indelible a portrait of a father as a compromised and unadmirable figure, but the story's origins matter not at all.
Tilghman's willingness to work this close to the perilous territory of autobiographical fiction stands as both a bracing show of nerve and a notable accomplishment. He is obviously writing a little about himself when a male character, as his fleeing wife puts it, has ''powers'' -- a deep empathetic connection with the woman he loves, one that enables him to feel what she is feeling, right up to knowing what city she has chosen as her escape from the suffocating demands of motherhood.
''She tries not to see what she's seeing, to see any landmarks through her own eyes, because Grant will see them too,'' Tilghman writes in ''Hole in the Day.'' ''She tries not to say the name of this city, because Grant will hear it. When she married him she didn't ask for this, except maybe by wanting something different as a teenager, something with mystery. . . . Grant is so thin and blond that people think he's nothing but a kid, until they look him in the eye.''
To follow this thread a little further, Tilghman has the powers that any imaginative writer must have, and he's also not afraid to ask us to look him in the eye. The only false note this approach creates comes in the title story, when the young man's controlling girlfriend, whom the father cannot help but detest, emerges as a devotee of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction -- the inspiration, she loudly announces, for the novel the son is writing.
(The last story in the collection, ''Mary in the Mountains,'' really seems written with deconstruction as inspiration, with results not as abhorrent as expected. But the presence of deconstruction still feels like a kind of knot in the fine grain of the book, a knot that has not been completely milled out.)
The sense that this collection is a kind of reaction to intellectual fashion comes through in the delight with which the working-class lives of virtually all the men in the book are drawn. Most have jobs like Stan Harris' in ''A Gracious Rain.''
''Stanley worked as a machinist at the Black & Decker plant in Easton, and often came home with feathery spirals of stainless steel caught in his hair,'' Tilghman writes. ''He knew enough to appreciate this job, in a plant that had landed as if from nowhere in a played-out corn field.''
Tilghman wants to illuminate the poetry of working people's lives, and he wants to use this poetry to make a point about the universality of all our concerns. In the end, he seems like a wonderfully versatile musician who can not only sing ballads and the occasional up-tempo number, but also can play some serious, wild blues guitar.
A set that offered less diversity, and fewer risks, might be more satisfying overall, but it wouldn't grab our attention in as charming a way, and it wouldn't speak so encouragingly about the prospects for Tilghman's next work.
The best thing about ''In a Father's Place,'' Christopher Tilghman's wonderful collection of seven stories, is that it does not really work together as an impeccably fitted whole.
Tilghman writes with precision, grace and an honesty that threatens to topple his astonishingly balanced storytelling. Yet he understands that a slightly mismatched batch of stories, as this is, has considerable rewards.
The title story, ''In a Father's Place,'' shares with other stories an attention to the strains and sacrifices in the relationship between fathers and sons, particularly as the sons grow into adulthood.
But in this story, set like some others along the Chesapeake Bay, the son is a young writer at work on an angry, score-settling novel about his father. This is a clear tip-off from Tilghman that he's mining the vein of autobiography.
For the most part, this unabashed display of writing what you know works beautifully. Tilghman lets the stories flow from him, rather than trying to settle scores through his stories. ''On the Rivershore,'' which opens the book, appears to grow from a genuine childhood memory that paints all too indelible a portrait of a father as a compromised and unadmirable figure, but the story's origins matter not at all.
Tilghman's willingness to work this close to the perilous territory of autobiographical fiction stands as both a bracing show of nerve and a notable accomplishment. He is obviously writing a little about himself when a male character, as his fleeing wife puts it, has ''powers'' -- a deep empathetic connection with the woman he loves, one that enables him to feel what she is feeling, right up to knowing what city she has chosen as her escape from the suffocating demands of motherhood.
''She tries not to see what she's seeing, to see any landmarks through her own eyes, because Grant will see them too,'' Tilghman writes in ''Hole in the Day.'' ''She tries not to say the name of this city, because Grant will hear it. When she married him she didn't ask for this, except maybe by wanting something different as a teenager, something with mystery. . . . Grant is so thin and blond that people think he's nothing but a kid, until they look him in the eye.''
To follow this thread a little further, Tilghman has the powers that any imaginative writer must have, and he's also not afraid to ask us to look him in the eye. The only false note this approach creates comes in the title story, when the young man's controlling girlfriend, whom the father cannot help but detest, emerges as a devotee of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction -- the inspiration, she loudly announces, for the novel the son is writing.
(The last story in the collection, ''Mary in the Mountains,'' really seems written with deconstruction as inspiration, with results not as abhorrent as expected. But the presence of deconstruction still feels like a kind of knot in the fine grain of the book, a knot that has not been completely milled out.)
The sense that this collection is a kind of reaction to intellectual fashion comes through in the delight with which the working-class lives of virtually all the men in the book are drawn. Most have jobs like Stan Harris' in ''A Gracious Rain.''
''Stanley worked as a machinist at the Black & Decker plant in Easton, and often came home with feathery spirals of stainless steel caught in his hair,'' Tilghman writes. ''He knew enough to appreciate this job, in a plant that had landed as if from nowhere in a played-out corn field.''
Tilghman wants to illuminate the poetry of working people's lives, and he wants to use this poetry to make a point about the universality of all our concerns. In the end, he seems like a wonderfully versatile musician who can not only sing ballads and the occasional up-tempo number, but also can play some serious, wild blues guitar.
A set that offered less diversity, and fewer risks, might be more satisfying overall, but it wouldn't grab our attention in as charming a way, and it wouldn't speak so encouragingly about the prospects for Tilghman's next work.
September 23, 2019
This book had been on my shelf for a long time. Not sure when and how I got it. It’s a collection of stories that are either father or son focused. I have to admit that I found the language used to describe where each story took place, to be inviting and detailed. However, I finished each story feeling like I had no clue as to what the story was actually about. A generous two stars to a book that I expected more from.
December 16, 2019
A collection of short stories, many taking place on the Eastern shore of Maryland, most about father and son relationships.
March 26, 2020
Quietly emotional set of short stories with beautiful descriptive prose.
February 5, 2016
"In a Father's Place," Christopher Tilghman's debut collection of short fiction, was widely praised upon its publication in 1990. Reading it again after many years, it is astounding and heartening to discover how well this book has held up. More than just a very good collection of stories, it strikes this reader as an important milestone in American fiction, a book to which others must bear comparison. Tilghman's stories, set primarily in and around Chesapeake Bay, depict family members struggling to connect with one another and deal with the often conflicting demands of contemporary life. Each story constructs its own subtle moral drama, in which fathers and mothers and sons and daughters test each other's vulnerabilities, grow together and apart, and sometimes discover that the needs of the family do not always serve the individual. Tilghman's prose, supple and plain as day, is filled with the kind of evocative detail that brings the world in which his characters reside clearly into focus. You close this book with the sense that you have experienced something rare and timeless and elemental, and absolutely essential. "In a Father's Place" sets a standard that few contemporary novels and story collections can match.
August 31, 2016
I did not like this book. I picked it up in one of those free book boxes because it seemed like several of the stories had to do with the eastern shore of Maryland, where I am from. But I wasn't drawn into it from the get-go, and only made myself finish it, partly because I kept thinking it might get better, and partly because I am a finisher. (I am always reluctant NOT to finish a book once I've started.) It never got any better. I can't say that any of the stories really struck me or even touched me. Most of them I really felt like I didn't 'get' or something seemed missing. They seemed old and outdated, and yet I couldn't even always figure out the timeframe--1960's? 1970's? 1980's? Maybe it's because I am more used to long novels, where the author has time to build a well-rounded picture of both the characters and the plot. I can see that this is much more challenging with short stories--but not impossible to do. I feel like Tilghman just wasn't able to write great short stories. I am not interested in reading anything else by this author.
February 23, 2009
The title piece in this collection of stories is gripping, or at least I found it so. It concerns a visit home by a young man, who is bringing along the new love of his life, as told from the perspective of his worldly-wise father. The woman portrayed is manipulative and excruciatingly unpleasant, and the father's dilemma is how to abide seeing his son so smitten with a person who clearly is not making him happy. I thought it was exceedingly well-told. The other stories are nice enough but are more in the vein of portraits of people in various predicaments without obvious resolutions. The father's story leaves part of its conclusion untold as well, but at least there the conflict and crisis are very sharp. The rest feel more like the sort of fiction I used to read in The New Yorker, which is not a criticism if you enjoy well-drawn characters and settings.
January 7, 2016
It must be hard to be a short story writer. You just don't get as much attention as the novelists. No matter how brilliant you are, no matter how many awards you get, there's only so many people who buy short story collections and that group does not seem to get much larger. Not everyone can be John Cheever or John Updike I guess. That's too bad since this is a pretty good collection. If you have read a few literary quarterlies, a lot of these stories will seem familiar. The title story seems to me to be similar to the Fitzgerald story 'The Ice Palace' for example. But that's OK, it's not derivative, at all, just similar. Lots of "real human emotions", and "evocative" and "lyrical" fiction here, as well as any of the other really common descriptions that you see on the backs of literary story collections. If I see anything by Tilghman, I'll probably pick it up.
April 14, 2016
This accomplished collection of stories highlights the experiences and feelings of men, particularly within marital and family life. While none of the stories send me into paroxyms of praise, I think Tilghman is a very good writer and, I trust, has gotten better with more recent books. I will look for them and will read them with interest.
October 11, 2011
Some of these stories are quite powerful and poignant, but they are a bit uneven. As the title suggests, the stories are about (in one way or another) fathers (living and dead) and their children, adult or still young. As in life, the relationships are inevitably complicated, and usually on both ends.
January 26, 2008
Written by Todd's UVA grad school professor Chris Tilghman. I enjoyed the stories.
November 23, 2008
Wonderful collection of short stories
December 21, 2009
the title story is great, and all are clever, affecting, complex pieces. (says my 1994 notebook)
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews