During the last month I read a book. Its title was “Strike the father dead”. The book was about a boy (Jeremy Coleman), his father (Alfred Coleman) and their story.

|Professor Alfred Coleman was a teacher at university. He wanted the best for his son and he was determined that he should become a university teacher like him. He didn’t know how to make his son understand his principles, so he tried to impose his ideas to Jeremy.
|Jeremy was very different from his father. He wanted to be free and do whatever he wanted. They didn’t get on well, because the father always talked about duty and Jeremy didn’t understand this word (and what his father wanted to say him across it). The only thing he wanted to do was playing jazz with his piano. He was very good at it, but his father considered it only a waste of time.
|Eleanor was the sister of Alfred Coleman and Jeremy’s aunt. She loved Jeremy and her brother too, and she always tried to make them understand each other, but with not much success. She is the only person in the family that first tried to understand Jeremy for what he was.

The main event of the story happened at the beginnings of the book: Jeremy was coming back home when he ran away from school and he spent a day in a farm. After that day he decided to run away from home and he went to London. There he found a work in a bar: he played jazz at the piano every night. There he met first Tim and Percy Brett.

|Tim was an amusing companion: his way of life was totally different from Jeremy’s father’s one. There was no duty in his life: there was only now, no yesterday, no tomorrow. That was a fascinating way of life for Jeremy, but he will soon notice that you can’t have faith in Tim. He had a wife and two children that had never seen him, and they hadn’t got the money to survive. He only used people.
|Percy Brett was a black man. He was also a jazzman: he played the valve trombone. He was like a second father for Jeremy: he learned lots of things about jazz and about life.

He played jazz with Percy for a long time, them he tried to make his father understand him, but it was pointless. So he went to Paris with Percy and Tim. During his stay there Jeremy knew Tim’s wife and children and he left Tim and Percy to return in England. He carried on playing the piano for ten years, but he played very bad, because he hadn’t got a reason to play. After ten years he met Percy again in England, and discovered another time the jazz music. The night before the first performance of their new band, Percy was attacked from a band of a half dozen ugly, violent men and Jeremy fought with him. They went to the hospital.

Jeremy’s father went to the hospital to visit Jeremy. They talked for the first time as a father talk to a son. They discovered they weren’t so different: they did their duty in the way they could do it, and it was a different way. But the father was very proud of Jeremy, because he didn’t run away when his friend was in danger. Then, the father knew first time Percy and talked with him.

At the end of the story, Jeremy an Percy carried on playing their music together, to realize their dream: find a new way between “old” and “new” jazz, and play it feeling it is worth doing.