Bad Dad. Really Bad.

Despite my complaining about Lily King's novel "The English Teacher," I went ahead and read "The Pleasing Hour," and blogged about both novels (on 7/23/10 and 7/29/10). Now I have just finished her latest, "Father of the Rain" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010), but I had to pick myself up by the scruff of my neck to push myself to finish it. What is it about this author that brings me back, but at the same time makes me feel so reluctant to keep going when I read her work? She writes beautifully and is obviously a major talent. But her main topic -- family dysfunction -- makes her fiction painful to read. In this novel, Gardiner Amory is alcoholic and cruel to his wives and children; he is also charming in a WASPy way, and manipulative. King's achievement is to show his awfulness without resorting to (many) dramatic scenes. Things seem to be going fine for a while, and then a sudden horribly cruel remark or a hard slap remind us that -- despite our hopes, and those of his daughter Daley -- it is highly unlikely that Gardiner will ever change. Daley keeps trying to help him, though, even -- at least for a while -- giving up a prized job and a loving boyfriend in order to do so. She can't accept that her childhood and family were so rotten, and she wants to change things by sheer desire and effort. Needless to say, it doesn't work. Readers will root for Daley, at the same time that they want to tell her, "Stop! Don't give up your own life and future for him!" Fortunately she does learn this lesson finally, and there is even a sort of feeble reconciliation at the end of the novel.