Between Them: Remembering My Parents, by Richard Ford (Bloomsbury 2017)

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Neil

Between Them is a memoir of Richard Ford's parents, in two parts written 30 years apart. The one about his mother was written in the aftermath of her death in 1981, the other he wrote recently, 55 years after his father's death in 1960. He attempts to understand what their life was like before Richard was born, when they were young and carefree in the early to middle part of the Twentieth Century. I think many of us wonder what their parents were like when they were young, but the past is out of reach, filtered through hazy memory and old photos. Ford has written a lovely remembrance, in exquisite prose, an affectionate portrait of two quite ordinary American people.