You Never Met My Father

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Graeme Sparkes' father was deployed to Kaitaichi, Japan a few months after Hiroshima, aged just 18. A few months later, he had a psychotic episode and spent the next four months in a Japanese psychiatric hospital.This Australian memoir by Melbourne resident and TESOL teacher, Graeme Sparkes is in the same vein as Angela's Ashes. It details the challenges of growing up in the 50s and 60s with a father who had severe mental illness and a gambling addiction. Growing up with a father who was responsible for two sieges, one of them 18 hours, and a second for almost 24 hours when he convinced police he had petrol bombs in the house. Sparkes had to get a Freedom of Information order to access all of his late father's medical records, which were held at Veteran Affairs. What followed was a journey of discovery, grief and compassion, as the story of his father's mental illness, at a time when support groups and organisations like Beyond Blue did not exist.