LITMIR.BIZ

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

      Copyright © Tim O’Brien 2019

      Cover photograph © Tim O’Brien

      Tim O’Brien asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Information on previously published material appears here.

      Excerpt from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway published by Arrow Books © 2011; From The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway published by Vintage © 1999; From A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway published by Arrow Books © 2004; From Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway published by Vintage © 2000; From Hemingway on War by Ernest Hemingway published by Vintage © 2014; From The Essential Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway published by Vintage © 2004. All reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

      Excerpt from Poems by Elizabeth Bishop published by Chatto & Windus © 2011. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

      Excerpt from ‘Seaside Golf’, from Collected Poems, by John Betjeman © 1955, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1979, 1981, 1982, 2001. Reproduced by permission of John Murray, an imprint of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

      Excerpt from ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ by Ezra Pound © Faber and Faber Ltd/New Directions.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Source ISBN: 9780008372491

      Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008372477

      Version: 2020-08-18

       Dedication

       For Tad, Timmy, and Meredith O’Brien

       Epigraph

      An entry from our babysitter’s journal, January 8, 2008: “You have never lived till you see a two-year-old fall in the toilet.”

      And there goes Tad, running through a heavy rain on Rue Malar in Paris, clutching a child’s umbrella, carefully splashing down in each available puddle. After a time, he lifts the umbrella over Meredith’s head and says, “You are my sunshine, even when it’s raining.”