Review by Booklist Review
As she did in the best-selling What My Mother and I Don't Talk About (2019), journalist and writing instructor Filgate gathers 16 spellbinding essays on parental relationships treasured and troubled, frustrating and fascinating. Kelly McMasters hasn't seen anything as beautiful as her lawn-hating, spiritual-gardener father's golf swing. For every end of innocence or other sad ending, there's a celebratory one: Nayomi Munaweera's parents' divorce after a fraught 50-year-marriage; Jiordan Castle's realization that saying goodbye to her father would "preserve us like a handprint in cement." After much literary searching, questions do remain. Alex Marzano-Lesnevich wonders if it was cute that their dad demanded the first lick of his kids' ice cream cones or "a reminder that everything we had belonged to him." Joanna Rakoff, learning the truth about long-accepted family history, asks what falsehoods she's passing along to her own children and if they'll forgive her. These fearless essays, each one unputdownable, are likely to reassure readers that whatever relationship they have or don't have with their own fathers is just right.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelists, poets, and essayists reflect on their relationships with their fathers in this intense companion piece to Filgate's 2019 anthology, What My Mother and I Don't Talk About. There are a few lighthearted selections, such as Kelly McMasters's soulful account of bonding with her reserved father over his passion for gardening. However, most entries are more unflinching than feel-good. For instance, in the searing "You Knew About That," Heather Sellers mournfully recalls how her alcoholic, absentee father's chronic reticence hampered her attempts to reconnect with him toward the end of his life. Elsewhere, Nayomi Munaweera discusses how taboo around divorce kept her Sri Lankan parents from ending their arranged marriage until their 80s despite constant bickering and her father's occasional bouts of violence; Jaquira Díaz describes convincing her father to open up about a rumored son from a relationship he'd had during a brief stint in New York City before moving back to Puerto Rico in the 1970s; and Robin Reif recounts the emotional devastation wrought by her father's preference for his son, which left her competing with her brother for her father's affection while her brother withered under the pressure to live up to his father's expectations. Though the devastating entries occasionally threaten to emotionally exhaust readers, there's no denying their poignancy and power. Readers will want to keep tissues handy. Agent: Mel Flashman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Fathers are the lodestone of this varied anthology, which circles them brilliantly. In this much-anticipated follow-up to the acclaimedWhat My Mother and I Don't Talk About, writer and editor Filgate prompts 15 esteemed writers to reflect on their fathers. The resulting essays offer a diverse spread, reflecting the panoply of relationships it's possible to have with that key figure. In Jiordan Castle's essay, she grapples with finding personal freedom from her father after he is reincarcerated. Susan Muaddi Darraj explores the duty-bound role of the eldest immigrant daughter alongside similar burdens placed on her father. In "The Son," Robin Reif reveals her desire to receive the status of a son within her patriarchal family and the complicated position her brother occupied as recipient of that coveted mantle. "Roots & Rhizomes" sees Kelly McMasters using the natural world to understand her father--"We've probably spoken more about plants than any other topic during our nearly fifty years sharing this planet." Jaquira Díaz seeks to understand the gaps in her father's life story while occupying the same city her father once spent a mysterious summer in. In "A Storybook Childhood," Joanna Rakoff reckons with a father who expounded at length about his and her mother's lives--some of which was true. Andrew Altschul surveys his father with newfound perspective as a father himself. Tomás Q. Morín takes the game of Operation as a tool to reach toward all pieces of his father. Heather Sellers and Julie Buntin speak with bracing honesty about reconnecting after paternal estrangement. Isle McElroy and Maurice Carlos Ruffin occupy the workspaces with their fathers. Alex Marzano-Lesnevich encounters the shifting power dynamic of aging. Dylan Landis returns from the first anthology to face her psychoanalyst father, and Nayomi Munaweera is back, looking at her parents' arranged marriage from the paternal side. Throughout, the essays are marked with love, honesty, and exquisite writing. With tenderness and aplomb in equal measure, these essays plumb the depths of paternal relations. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
