Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

My Father's Diet

By: Adrian Nathan West
Narrated by: Tim Campbell
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

In a broken-down Middle American town, the disintegration of a struggling family—its ambitions and emotions worn thin—is laid bare through the cold eyes of its only son. While studying at the local community college to finish his degree, he works what his divorced parents deem to be menial jobs and tries to stay out of their way, keeping his pitiless observations about their lives to himself. He says nothing about his semi-estranged father's doomed attempts to find meaning in strip-mall spirituality. He says nothing about his mother's willingness to subjugate herself to men he deems unworthy. He says nothing about the anonymity and emptiness to which their social classes and places of birth seem to have condemned everyone he knows, robbing them of even the vocabulary to express their grievances. He says nothing about his own pity, disgust, compassion, tenderness and love—and when his father enters a bodybuilding competition, he swallows his scorn and agrees to help.

Instantly relatable, impeccably realised and grimly hilarious, My Father's Diet is equal parts Kierkegaard, This Side of Paradise and Pumping Iron: an autopsy of antiquated notions of manhood and the perfect bite-sized novel for a world always keen to mistake narcissism for introspection.

©2022 Adrian Nathan West (P)2022 W F Howes
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Losing Clementine cover art
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self cover art
Fireworks Every Night cover art
Donna Has Left the Building cover art
Midnight Calling cover art
We Love Anderson Cooper cover art
The Town of Babylon cover art
The Weight of Air cover art
So Late in the Day cover art
Fiona and Jane cover art
The Coward cover art

Critic reviews

"Imagine a precise, refined eye looking at all the grotesque realities of mall life in Middle America and you'll have a sense of My Father's Diet. It's as if the Joyce of Dubliners were looking at Akron." (Edmund White)

“Adrian Nathan West, one of our best translators, is also one of our best novelists. He gives such solemn care to such mundane American pap even while denying any redemptive power to the effort and it's that denial—sorrowful, but without anger, without delusion—that constitutes his brilliance. My Father's Diet is among the most ruthlessly true chronicles of the culture—of the patrimony—that we, all of us, have ruined." (Joshua Cohen)

What listeners say about My Father's Diet

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 2.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Comedic imagery and profundity found in the mundane.

A view through the eyes of a son of his fathers misguided and belated attempt to share his inner life and set an example of a masculine ideal. It hits some comedic high notes and all of the characters are very well drawn. Highly recommend 👍

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!