Measuring Up

  • Language:
    Publisher:
  • English
    Penguin Canada
About Measuring Up:

A tender memoir of fathers and sons, love and loss, and learning to fill boots a size too big.

Dan Robson’s father is a builder, a fixer. A man whose high-school education is enough not only to provide for his family, but to build a successful business. Rick Robson holds things up. When he dies, nothing in his son’s world feels steady anymore. In a very real sense, the home his father had built is suddenly fragile. Without its natural caretaker, the house will fall to pieces–and his family shows all the same signs of crumbling.

Dan is hit especially hard. He knows he is not the man his father was. Dan never learned the blue-collar skills he admired, because his father wanted him to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. Now that his father is gone, the acknowledgment of his sacrifices and the sheer longing to be close to him again in some way draw Dan to the tools that lie unused in the garage. So begins Dan’s year of learning the skills his father’s hands had long mastered, and trying to fill the steel-toe boots left behind. Measuring Up is the story of that journey.

Robson picks up where his father left off, working on the house and the truck, as much for the family as for himself. In much the same way that Michael Pollan comes to know his house inside-out in A Place of My Own, Robson learns the mysteries and proud satisfaction of plumbing, carpentry, wiring, and drywalling, and comes to understand how our homes are built. He also comes to see how his home was built by his father, uncovering more than one heartbreaking reminder of the kind of man his father was, and what he meant to his family.

Tender and unflinching, Measuring Up is a story of love, mourning, and learning what it means to be a man.


Critical Praise:

"Dan Robson skillfully constructs a monument to the legacy of his craftsman father. It is a testament to the unbreakable bond between every father and son. It inspires each of us to a straighter plumb, a truer square, and a higher level.”

Murray Howe, bestselling author of Nine Lessons I Learned from My Father


"A beautiful, clear-eyed elegy to families. How the foundation is laid, how the structure is crafted, and, eventually, how all of us have to manage its collapse. Dan Robson’s memoir is about sons and fathers. More than that, it’s about the hard road that leads from being one to becoming the other."

Cathal Kelly, author of Boy Wonders


"Robson’s reflection on male grief and vulnerability is as generous and courageous as the father whose ghost haunts this story."

D.W. Wilson, author of Once You Break a Knuckle and Ballistics


About the Author(s):

Dan Robson is Head of Features and a Senior Writer for The Athletic Canada. He is an award-winning journalist and the bestselling author of several books. Previously he was a Senior Writer at Sportsnet Magazine and Sportsnet.ca.


Other Books by Dan Robson:
  • Bower

  • Change Up*

  • Killer

  • Quinn

  • The Crazy Game