Tales My Father Never Told

Now 90, Edmonds (Drums Along the Mohawk, Chad Hanna) here turns to reminiscences of his childhood, spent alternately in the foothills of the Adirondacks and in New York City's Greenwich Village, and particularly of his relationship with his father, an exceedingly successful patent attorney. A bachelor until he was 50, his father seems to have had much in common with Father Day of Life With Father: he was strong-willed, demanding, quick-tempered and stubborn. But while Clarence Day wrote of his father with a sunny and tolerant forgiveness, Edmonds's approach is more objective, sometimes clinical, perhaps because the great difference in their ages prevented them from really understanding each other. The result is a book that is not deeply affecting until the father's death, when his carefully hidden vulnerability is brought home to the son in a ``surge of love.'' Photos. (Mar.)