The Closer We are to Dying - Softcover

"Joe Fiorito has all the right stuff. His splendid memoir about his relationship with his dying father belongs on that small shelf with Philip Roth's Patrimony and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes." -Mordecai Richler "A small, quiet masterpiece...Fiorito's story is strange and sad, devoted to unvarnished truth." -"The Times ("London) "A touching and effectively understated blend of family history, father-son friendship and personal passage from old anger and resentment into reconciliation and love." -"Publishers Weekly" " Joe Fiorito has all the right stuff. His splendid memoir about his relationship with his dying father belongs on that small shelf with Philip Roth' s Patrimony and Frank McCourt' s Angela' s Ashes." -- Mordecai Richler " A small, quiet masterpiece...Fiorito' s story is strange and sad, devoted to unvarnished truth." -- "The Times ("London) " A touching and effectively understated blend of family history, father-son friendship and personal passage from old anger and resentment into reconciliation and love." -- "Publishers Weekly" "Joe Fiorito has all the right stuff. His splendid memoir about his relationship with his dying father belongs on that small shelf with Philip Roth's Patrimony and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes." --Mordecai Richler "A small, quiet masterpiece...Fiorito's story is strange and sad, devoted to unvarnished truth." --"The Times ("London) "A touching and effectively understated blend of family history, father-son friendship and personal passage from old anger and resentment into reconciliation and love." --"Publishers Weekly"

This is a funny yet poignant evocation of an Italian family in Canada, recounted through the tales Joe Fiorito's father would tell and retell at the kitchen table after a night's drinking. As death approaches, the old man can only manage snatches of the stories that once kept his listeners spellbound.