Shadow of a Doubt: My Father and Myself - Richard Freadman

Richard Freadman's Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself is a heart wrenching, intellectually penetrating exploration of a father/son relationship that is as much a cultural and social history as it is a family chronice. This is memoir at its best: story telling and meditation woven together to make a compelling and unforgettable portrait of a single Jewish Australian middle-class family whose struggles, loyalties, failures and aspirations reflect tensions at the heart of Western culture-between decency and ambition, affection and success.

Alan Shapiro, poet, memoirist and William R. Kenan Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Richard Freadman's finely written Shadow of Doubt breaks new ground in Australian letters and will assume an enduring position in the tradition of Australian memoir.

Arnold Zable, author of Jewels and Ashes and The Fig Tree

A boy of 11 has a fateful conversation with his father. He senses deep unease in the older man. As their fraught but fond relationship evolves, the son sees a father shadowed by doubt, and sees that same shadow fall across bis own pats.

This beautifully written and intensely moving memoir traces the father's battle with corrosive inner forces, and the son's struggle to emerge from the parent's shadow whilst continuing to honour the father be loves.

Bystander Press 2003, paperback