Beckett's Children by Michael Coffey - ISBN: 9781682195239
Paperback
Absence, lineage, loss: A father’s search through literature and life.
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Beckett's Children

A Literary Memoir

$35.67

  • Paperback

    192 pages

  • Release Date

    5 November 2026

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Summary

Where literary criticism meets memoir, Beckett’s Children explores how absence, lineage, and loss echo across art and life.

Beckett’s Children is a lyrical blend of personal memoir, father-son dialogue, and literary investigation that probes the works of Irish writer Samuel Beckett and American poet Susan Howe in search of traces of their long-rumored status as father and daughter. Although Howe has denied the rumor, the possibility that it might be true leads Coffey…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781682195239
ISBN-10:1682195236
Author:Michael Coffey
Publisher:OR Books
Imprint:OR Books
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:192
Release Date:5 November 2026
Dimensions:203mm x 127mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

PRAISE FOR THE HARDBACK:

“[A]n important addition to the world of adoption stories—very few by men and none as deep and thoughtful as this.” —A.M. Homes

“Dark, brooding, precise, difficult, daring … an incomparable piece of writing.” —Barry Schwabsky

“I read this beautiful book all in one sitting. It is stunning—poetic and profound.” —Lois Oppenheim

“The force of Coffey’s personal abyss asserts the form the book itself takes. Susan Howe emerges here as someone soldering her own abyss…. As for the Beckett side of this story, I think it is right to contest the taboo.” —Seán Kennedy

“A potent and personal reflection on paternity.” Publishers Weekly

“This profound meditation by an exquisite writer at the top of his craft centers around the author’s twin abiding obsessions: the ramifications of him being adopted and his literary hero Samuel Beckett.” Irish Boston

“Lyrical…intimate and revealing. Quite different from traditional scholarship.” —Times Literary Supplement

“Assembling his fragments — what he calls his ‘leaves’, his ‘stacks’, his ‘woods’ — Coffey constructs a book that defies taboo and evades expectation that it fit neatly into any pre-established genre: poetry, memoir, academic research, speculation, dream, fantasy, genealogy, all are mobilised into a fragile urgent venturing that can leave the reader reeling.” —Beckett Review

About The Author

Michael Coffey

Michael Coffey was, until 2014, the co-editorial director of Publishers Weekly. His hybrid fiction Samuel Beckett Is Closed was described by The New York Times Book Review as “a ghostly collaboration” and “a rewarding challenge” to the reader.

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