Father of the Rain
A Novel
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4.3 • 78 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Prize-winning author Lily King’s masterful new novel spans three decades of a volatile relationship between a charismatic, alcoholic father and the daughter who loves him.
Gardiner Amory is a New England WASP who's beginning to feel the cracks in his empire. Nixon is being impeached, his wife is leaving him, and his worldview is rapidly becoming outdated. His daughter, Daley, has spent the first eleven years of her life negotiating her parents’ conflicting worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother and the conservative, decadent, liquor-soaked life of her father. But when they divorce, and Gardiner’s basest impulses are unleashed, the chasm quickly widens and Daley is stretched thinly across it.
As she reaches adulthood, Daley rejects the narrow world that nourished her father’s fears and prejudices, and embarks on her own separate life—until he hits rock bottom. Lured home by the dream of getting her father sober, Daley risks everything she's found beyond him, including her new love, Jonathan, in an attempt to repair a trust broken years ago.
A provocative story of one woman's lifelong loyalty to her father, Father of the Rain is a spellbinding journey into the emotional complexities and magnetic pull of family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whiting Award winner King (The English Teacher) captures with easy strokes the bold and dangerous personalities lurking inside the mundane frame of domestic drama. Her third novel, narrated by the clear-eyed daughter of an alcoholic father, follows their evolving relationship. The opening scene with 11-year-old Daley and her father wreaking delirious havoc by streaking naked at a martini-fueled pool party in the sleepy Boston suburbs brims with Daley's love for her father and desire for connection with him, but is also tinged with the repercussions of a charismatic man divorced from the role of parenthood, unlike Daley's socially responsible mother. Daley watches her father's continued degradation, but after years of self-imposed cultural and emotional distance from him she flourishes at Berkeley and builds a loving, stable relationship with an African-American man she knows her Waspish father will despise she eventually returns to her father's side after he is no longer capable of living alone. While Daley's perfect romance with her strapping, intelligent suitor is simplistic though sensual, King's latest is original and deftly drawn, the work of a master psychological portraitist.
Customer Reviews
Father of the Rain
Has there ever been a "normal" father/daughter relationship outside of TV episodes of "Father Knows Best?" The girl is seeking something she will never have and we experience this over and over, in fact ad nauseum. She is intelligent but her emotions drive her -- another daughter would have written her father off after the first summer of hell she spent with him when her parents divorced.
She keeps pressing her nose against the bakery window; the pies are so delicious and so completely unattainable.
I found this story repetitious and meandering, yet I was captivated by the description of the town, the house and some of the characters. Character driven with a predictable plot, the story was too long.
I would recommend this book to women who had strained and strange relationships with their fathers, if they wanted to share an "aha!" moment. But then again who needs to be reminded of a sad past?
Obviously a lot of time went into the writing of the book regarding the minutest details of the town. But in the end the question one asks is "do I care about these people?" My answer would be no.
Respectfully, Allegreta Blau
Perfect Imperfection
Real life is never quite as lovely as a Hollywood happy ending. There is no perfect relationship. No perfect family. No perfect parent. We all live with what fate brings us. Lily King does a perfect job of addressing the imperfections in life in this brilliant novel. It ends not happily, not sadly, it just ends. An ending, and a story, that is much more faithful to real life than any Hollywood fantasy.
Heartwarming and heartbreaking, but in a good way
It's tough out there. Emotional abuse by ones parents is shocking, yet it happens more often than not.
This is a very well written story and I recommend it highly!