What do you think?
Rate this book
Farewell to the Father
"Tim Elliott's story - on his father and love against the odds - will split your heart open." Benjamin Law
Towards the end of his first serious suicide attempts, my father said the strangest thing to me...
Growing up in 1970s Sydney, Tim Elliott had a loving stay-at-home mum, a professional father, three siblings, a private school education and endless opportunities to fish and surf at the nearby beaches.
But this was not the idyllic childhood it appeared. A charismatic, well-respected doctor by day, Tim's father became a roaring madman at night.
The house was our castle, and Dad was our king. He was an unpredictable king, tyrannous and moody, lethal one day, loving the next.
This is an extraordinary memoir of growing up with a parent afflicted by mental a complex elegy, powerfully told, loaded with love, rage and surprising humour. It is about the lengths children will go to protect themselves - and their families - from shame or harm, and how adapting to that adversity becomes and intractable part of who we are as adults.
PRAISE FOR TIM ELLIOT
"...he has brought us a most extraordinary memoir - bitter-sweet, tragicomic - and in the end redemptive." Sydney Morning Herald
"Searing piece on mental illness... Bravo" Jessica Rowe
"One of the finest, most moving pieces on mental illness you'll ever read" Professor Simon Chapman
Towards the end of his first serious suicide attempts, my father said the strangest thing to me...
Growing up in 1970s Sydney, Tim Elliott had a loving stay-at-home mum, a professional father, three siblings, a private school education and endless opportunities to fish and surf at the nearby beaches.
But this was not the idyllic childhood it appeared. A charismatic, well-respected doctor by day, Tim's father became a roaring madman at night.
The house was our castle, and Dad was our king. He was an unpredictable king, tyrannous and moody, lethal one day, loving the next.
This is an extraordinary memoir of growing up with a parent afflicted by mental a complex elegy, powerfully told, loaded with love, rage and surprising humour. It is about the lengths children will go to protect themselves - and their families - from shame or harm, and how adapting to that adversity becomes and intractable part of who we are as adults.
PRAISE FOR TIM ELLIOT
"...he has brought us a most extraordinary memoir - bitter-sweet, tragicomic - and in the end redemptive." Sydney Morning Herald
"Searing piece on mental illness... Bravo" Jessica Rowe
"One of the finest, most moving pieces on mental illness you'll ever read" Professor Simon Chapman
336 pages, Paperback
Published April 26, 2016
7 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 19, 2016
Honest. Heartbreaking.
Never has mental illness been described so fluently and so real as this memoir.
Congratulations Mr Elliott. Not only for shedding light on your father but with your own issues with the disease.
Never has mental illness been described so fluently and so real as this memoir.
Congratulations Mr Elliott. Not only for shedding light on your father but with your own issues with the disease.
December 7, 2016
Why was there no commentary on the link between drugs and the exacerbation of the symptoms of mental illness? The writer gives his father some pot just prior to the extreme outburst which had the writer and his mother fleeing the family home - the mother never to return. The writer indulges in a cocktail of drugs and alcohol before the onset of a severe depression (and this is when he is a husband and father, not when he is responsibility free) but does not castigate himself for this. There is no shame, no remorse expressed for this behaviour. What alternative therapy options did he explore and then promote?
Self-indulgent and blinkered. I was so angry by the time I had finished this book.
Self-indulgent and blinkered. I was so angry by the time I had finished this book.
January 20, 2019
I couldn’t put it down! Raw and honest- highly recommended.
Read
August 21, 2016Mary Karr has said that every memoir is a survival story, triumphant just because the people are still breathing. Tim Elliott’s Farewell to the Father is a survival story with a capital S. Max Elliott was a larger-than-live character—full of laughter, a thrower of grand parties, letting Tim and his siblings grow pot in the backyard, walking around naked and performing mock-deaths in restaurants for the amusement of his family. But he also suffered terrible lows. Max Elliott was bipolar, and his warm exuberance was countered by days of weeping, dangerous rages that had him shaking a knife at his wife and attempting to strangle his youngest son Tim. Max threatened suicide for years, but when he finally succeeded, his son was left bereft, blaming himself and dragging his feet through the same mud as his father—finding him in his own depressions, obsessive thoughts, and anxiety.
The book opens with Max’s first suicide attempt, when he tells his eight-year-old son to “always be a man.” At the time Tim had no idea what this meant, particularly in light of what his dad had just done. Max never clarified it either, at least not verbally, but Farewell to the Father attempts to uncover that answer. Tim Elliott’s journey is not only the search for his father—the man he adored and despised in equal measure (and it’s possible that we all adore and despise our fathers in equal measure, even when they don’t have a mental illness that ends in suicide), but also a search for the answer to the question of what it means to “always be a man”. The whole notion of manhood is brought into question in this book. Tim’s elder brother Rob exemplified that kind of manhood – the silent, surfing tough guy who doesn’t need help and doesn’t talk about feelings:
In one almost throwaway line, Elliott says his perception of his brother wasn’t accurate, and it seems that this discovery that men don’t need to be caveman caricatures, and that vulnerability doesn’t equate to weakness, is one of the key themes of the book. The narrative is driven forward by Tim’s timorous steps towards feeling his own anger, recognising his dad and their illnesses for what they are, and ultimately moving towards forgiveness – of his father, his siblings, his mother, and most importantly, himself.
Farewell to the Father is exquisitely written: so earthy and ribald at times that the passages that are pure poetry almost come as a shock:
Although the story is intensely sad, Farewell to the Father is never maudlin. At times it’s so funny, I found myself laughing out loud, even in the midst of horror:
Max’s reprinted love letters to his wife, Tim’s mother Rosey, provide the chapter separators. The last one, which Rosey never saw, is especially moving. As Max’s illness progressed, his desperation and disintegration is both tragic and fascinating, following a fast-paced narrative towards the inevitable conclusion. The mingled sense of fear, anger, love, and guilt suffuse the pages, and although Tim’s story is an extreme one, anyone who has lost a parent will understand these emotions. The book ends with Tim admitting that he couldn’t save his father; that there was no answer; no key. But there is a key for Tim. The key is love: “I could do this. Love was all that was required, and I could love. I had that within me.” (289). Farewell to the Father is a powerful and beautiful book, and one that will resonate and stay with readers.
The book opens with Max’s first suicide attempt, when he tells his eight-year-old son to “always be a man.” At the time Tim had no idea what this meant, particularly in light of what his dad had just done. Max never clarified it either, at least not verbally, but Farewell to the Father attempts to uncover that answer. Tim Elliott’s journey is not only the search for his father—the man he adored and despised in equal measure (and it’s possible that we all adore and despise our fathers in equal measure, even when they don’t have a mental illness that ends in suicide), but also a search for the answer to the question of what it means to “always be a man”. The whole notion of manhood is brought into question in this book. Tim’s elder brother Rob exemplified that kind of manhood – the silent, surfing tough guy who doesn’t need help and doesn’t talk about feelings:
Rob regarded emotion as slippery and treacherous, like a kind of mud: one slip and you’d be down there, rolling around in it. (229)
In one almost throwaway line, Elliott says his perception of his brother wasn’t accurate, and it seems that this discovery that men don’t need to be caveman caricatures, and that vulnerability doesn’t equate to weakness, is one of the key themes of the book. The narrative is driven forward by Tim’s timorous steps towards feeling his own anger, recognising his dad and their illnesses for what they are, and ultimately moving towards forgiveness – of his father, his siblings, his mother, and most importantly, himself.
Farewell to the Father is exquisitely written: so earthy and ribald at times that the passages that are pure poetry almost come as a shock:
In winter, storms boil up the Southern Ocean, making it smoke, chiseling it with dagger-like winds, flogging up welts of swell capped with whiteness, plumes of ice and air that are shed in sheets as the waves push on, pulsing north, low breathing and full of intent.
These waves will try to drown you.
These waves will crack you open.
These waves set you free. (224-225)
Although the story is intensely sad, Farewell to the Father is never maudlin. At times it’s so funny, I found myself laughing out loud, even in the midst of horror:
But with Dad, everything came together south of the border, so to speak, in his bowels, his endlessly restive, serially malfunctioning bowels. Rarely in the history of colorectal medicine have a set of bowels exerted such complete dominion over one household. Piles, polyps, hemorrhoids, fissures: there was always something the matter with Dad’s back end, some unspeakable condition with whose symptoms – pain, swelling, bleeding – we all in time become intimately familiar. (92-93)
Max’s reprinted love letters to his wife, Tim’s mother Rosey, provide the chapter separators. The last one, which Rosey never saw, is especially moving. As Max’s illness progressed, his desperation and disintegration is both tragic and fascinating, following a fast-paced narrative towards the inevitable conclusion. The mingled sense of fear, anger, love, and guilt suffuse the pages, and although Tim’s story is an extreme one, anyone who has lost a parent will understand these emotions. The book ends with Tim admitting that he couldn’t save his father; that there was no answer; no key. But there is a key for Tim. The key is love: “I could do this. Love was all that was required, and I could love. I had that within me.” (289). Farewell to the Father is a powerful and beautiful book, and one that will resonate and stay with readers.
October 25, 2016
This by far isn't the worst book that I've read but it's no where near the best. It's all over the place and you don't learn much about any of the 'characters' in the book. There wasn't much development in terms with him, he doesn't have much of an understanding of his mental health or addiction and that's concerning yet you feel detacted from the him because of the way it's written. I just wasn't a fan and I don't think that the book is worth the retail value, it's evident that he mainly does jounralism pieces. I wouldn't reccomend it but I don't hate it.
January 4, 2017
This is a brilliant book. It captures the anguish of loving someone and hating someone simultaneously. The author conveys his emotional conflict very well. The depths of his emotions tumbles from the page. He manages to be respectful while explaining awkward encounters.
I'm a little perplexed about the reviews regarding the father's episode after consuming marijuana. It seemed to me that his behavior reached a climax so to speak. His behavior was not created by the drug but heightened. I wonder if those critiques/reviewers read the full book or simply this excerpt?
I'm a little perplexed about the reviews regarding the father's episode after consuming marijuana. It seemed to me that his behavior reached a climax so to speak. His behavior was not created by the drug but heightened. I wonder if those critiques/reviewers read the full book or simply this excerpt?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 4, 2021
One of the most moving, heart wrenching memoirs I have ever read. So sad and honest and it left me in tears. Reading this story of a boys relationship with his bipolar Father as he descends into the black hole of manic depression and final suicide is a hugely emotional journey.
August 15, 2017
Touching and devastating but more powerful as an article than a memoir I felt
September 1, 2022
I was crying after the first couple of pages.
October 16, 2022
Beautifully written. Raw & honest. Couldn’t put it down.
December 31, 2022
Highly readable & good portrayal of family life with a bipolar father who was a well regarded doctor & brilliant in his own right but made for a chaotic home. Author is a journalist.
February 28, 2017
Great read !
January 2, 2017
A courageous book and thank you for writing
September 13, 2016
Not always easy to read as it illustrates just how difficult Tim's father was to live with. It really highlights how Tim's Mother and Tim as the youngest child, bore the brunt of his Father's mental illness. Also highlights the attitude of not talking about depression and mental illness in the 70s and 80s and the lack of help that was available at the time. Tim's description of his depression and anxiety as an adult is good and I believe it gives great insight into these states.
June 24, 2020
Loved it. A very personal story written succinctly but with heart. Never miss the opportunity to see what goes on behind other's closed doors - it expands the compassionate mind.
To those here who judge the author for some level responsibility, remember he was a child and teenager for most of what is written here. He had little control over his parent's choices. And suffered later because of that.
To those here who judge the author for some level responsibility, remember he was a child and teenager for most of what is written here. He had little control over his parent's choices. And suffered later because of that.
July 4, 2016
As I grew up about the same time as the author it was easy to recognise the culture he was part of, and how his family unit functioned (or didn't function, as it turns out).
The writing is stupendous; I laughed and I cried. Especially appreciate the author uncovering his vulnerability and emotions. The story is heartfelt, raw emotions.
The writing is stupendous; I laughed and I cried. Especially appreciate the author uncovering his vulnerability and emotions. The story is heartfelt, raw emotions.
September 9, 2016
It's been a while since I was propelled quickly through a memoir. A book about depression by someone with depression that nevertheless manages not to ruminate too much on depression, the relationships were the hook for me. I wanted to know more about Rosemary, the author's mother but overall, a satisfying read.
December 19, 2016
I DON'T OFTEN READ A BOOK IN A DAY BUT THIS ONE WAS AN EXCEPTION.
I LAUGHED SO HARD BUT THEN I CRIED JUST AS HARD. HEART WRENCHING TO READ BUT SO ENCOURAGING AND A REAL TESTIMONY ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH.
I LAUGHED SO HARD BUT THEN I CRIED JUST AS HARD. HEART WRENCHING TO READ BUT SO ENCOURAGING AND A REAL TESTIMONY ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH.
May 7, 2016
I found this a real page turner. Great insight into the impact that depression can have on a family and encouragement for those who suffer themselves.
August 18, 2016
I really enjoyed this, i was laughing and crying, highly recommend for those who suffer or have friends and family that suffer depression
Read
April 20, 2023BOOKCLUB - Reading between the wines - This month's book chosen by Traci Scored 8.15
April 12, 2017
This is such an honest and uncomplicated account of living with very complicated mental illnesses.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews