My Father, the Pornographer

I had recently tracked down quite a lot of books by Andrew j Offutt who i was under the impression was a science fiction & fantasy writer but apparently his output as a pornographer dwarfed his production in these fields. In the hunt for some of the books I was after I came across the book in question written by his son Chris and was astonished at how gripping it was. Andrew J Offutt, it seems, was an unusual man with a non-standard approach to life who ruled the roost at home like an ogre. Whatever I may have imagined he was like, I was totally surprised by the reality and the warts and all honesty of his son in this book takes the breath away. Much of the book sees Chris searching for answers following his father's death, answers which were almost impossibly hard to come by when he was alive as among many other strange quirks he more or less refused to ever answer any questions. In a sense its almost a detective story. Chris puts himself through a self imposed trial of exhaustive thoroughness and the story he gets from it is a fascinating odyssey that kept me reading without pause. This book is a magnificent achievement - the dark side is laid bare in a most privileged fashion.