A Portrait of Grief

Charles Foran, who has published a dozen titles, writes in his latest, “I can’t seem to finish this book.” One can sympathize. What promises at first to be a classic father-son narrative — perhaps along the lines of John Mortimer’s A Voyage round My Father or Robert Anderson’s I Never Sang for My Father — proves to be nothing of the kind. If there is narrative here, it is hard to detect in a jumble of reminiscences, anecdotes, fantasies, and lengthy reflections on the ­meaning of life.

Foran has written two biographies: the award-winning Mordecai: The Life and Times and the short, punchy Maurice Richard, about the legendary hockey player. He clearly possesses the unique skills that biography requires, including sound research instincts; the ability to sort the facts from the fictions, both small and large, that survivors tell and that documents may ­contain; and the capability to construct a coherent story.

Poised in a liminal...