Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates

I wish Joyce Carol Oates would choose happier topics for her books (here and here). I love her writing but why are all the books so very dark? Little Bird of Heavenis the story of a girl whose father is suspected of murdering his mistress, a crime he did not commit, but the town’s suspicion [...]

The Cradle by Patrick Somerville

I liked The Cradle but I would not completely believe in it. I liked the idea of the young father-to-be setting out on a quest for his wife’s long-lost cradle. I liked the way he becomes a father in an unexpected way during the quest. I liked how his story as an abandoned and abused [...]

The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham

Like An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination (which talks about losing a baby), The Suicide Indexdiscusses a taboo topic, death by suicide, in a very intimate way since the author’s father killed himself, unexpectedly. She names the chapters as one would an index, hence the title of the book, which creates eerie [...]

The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg

The Prince of Frogdown is a cleverly-told story of the author’s father interleaved with the story of his relationship with his young stepson. His dad was a poor Alabaman blue collar worker who drank too much, abandoned his family, and died young. His stepson, a well-loved, well-protected little boy is having a totally different childhood than [...]

A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burrows

If you like Augusten Burrows you will like A Wolf at the Table, which is the story of his alcoholic father, the story of his insane mother having been told in Running with Scissors. (His family is amazingly dysfunctional — it’s a miracle he pulled through, although read Dry to see what he had to [...]

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

The Middle Place is a memoir by a Bay Area woman who got breast cancer at age 36, and whose beloved father got bladder cancer about the same time. Talk about rotten luck. But the book is not about that, not really: it’s about the fantastic strength she got from her adoring and wonderful father, [...]