The Critic's Daughter: A Memoir

by Priscilla Gilman

An exquisitely rendered portrait of a unique father-daughter relationship and a moving memoir of family and identity. Growing up on the Upper West Side of New York City in the 1970s, in an apartment filled with dazzling literary and artistic characters, Priscilla Gilman worshiped her brilliant, adoring, and mercurial father, the writer, theater critic, and Yale School of Drama professor Richard Gilman. But when Priscilla was ten years old, her mother, renowned literary agent Lynn Nesbit, abruptly announced that she was ending the marriage. The resulting cascade of disturbing revelations―about her parents’ hollow marriage, her father’s double life and tortured sexual identity―fundamentally changed Priscilla’s perception of her father, as she attempted to protect him from the depression that had long shadowed him. A wrenching story about what it means to be the daughter of a demanding parent, a revelatory window into the impact of divorce, and a searching reflection on the nature of art and criticism, The Critic’s Daughter is an unflinching account of loss and grief―and a radiant testament of forgiveness and love.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, New York, Writing, Theatre

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 7, 2023

About the author

Priscilla Gilman is a former professor of English literature at both Yale University and Vassar College and the author of The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy (Harper), and The Critic's Daughter, to be published by Norton in February, 2023. She graduated from Yale summa cum laude, with exceptional distinction in the English major. She went on to earn her masters and Ph.D. in English and American literature at Yale and spent two years as an assistant professor of English at Yale and four years as an assistant professor of English at Vassar College before leaving academia in 2006. From 2006-2011, she worked as a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, representing a wide range of literary fiction, inspirational memoir, wellness, and psychology/education books. During these years, she also taught poetry appreciation to inmates in a restorative justice program and to New York City public school students and spoke at numerous early childhood and education conferences and events.

The Anti-Romantic Child, Gilman’s first book, was excerpted in Newsweek magazine and featured on the cover of its international edition. It received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist, was an NPR Morning Edition Must-Read, Slate‘s Book of the Week, selected as one of the year’s Best Books by the Leonard Lopate Show, and chosen as a Best Book of the year by The Chicago Tribune. The Anti-Romantic Child was one of five nominees for a Books for a Better Life Award for Best First Book and was awarded the Mom’s Choice Gold Award, rewarding the best in family-friendly media and literature. Andrew Solomon called it “rapturously beautiful and deeply moving, profound, and marvelous.” Gilman’s second book, The Critic’s Daughter, will be published by W.W. Norton; a memoir about her relationship with her brilliant and complicated father, the late drama and literary critic Richard Gilman, it is set in the heyday of intellectual culture in New York of the 1970s and 80s.

Gilman has written about literature, parenting, autism, and education and reviewed fiction and literary non-fiction for the Daily Beast, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times’ Motherlode, The Chicago Tribune, MORE, O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Redbook, the Boston Globe, and Huff Post Parents. Her New York Times op-ed, “Don’t Blame Autism for Newtown,” was the most shared piece on the site for two days after its publication and her piece for Slate, “’My Spaceship Knows Which Way To Go’: How David Bowie Helped my Autistic Son Become Himself,” has been read by millions of people worldwide after being praised and shared by the official David Bowie website and social media accounts.

Since 2011, Gilman has taught literature in countless settings: private book groups, classes for Yale Alumni College, an Asian literature book group for the Asia Society in Manhattan, workshops in high schools and at non-profits for Humanities New York, graduate seminars for medical students at Mt Sinai Medical School, high school English classes at the Collegiate School and Grace Church School. She was the parenting/education advice columnist for #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Cain’s Quiet Revolution website and since 2013, has been a regular book critic for the Boston Globe. She speaks frequently at schools, conferences, and organizations about parenting, education, autism, and the arts. She has received fellowships and grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Speranza Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the New York Council for the Humanities. In 1997, Gilman won the Yale College Graduate Prize Teaching Fellowship; in 2019, she won the Yale Alumni College Distinguished Teaching award. In 2018, she became a certified Mindfulness and Loving-Kindness meditation teacher.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Critic’s Daughter: A Memoir – Pricilla Gilman – 2023 –
The life of distinguished theater-literary critic professor Richard Gilman (1923-2006) is celebrated and chronicled in this wonderful debut memoir. In the 1970’s, childhood at 333 Central Park West was “magical” for Pricilla and her sister Claire. Her father worked from his home office, cared for his daughters, and championed that his wife, the literary agent Lynn Nesbit, worked outside the home, which was uncommon at the time. The girls adored their father, he played creative exciting games, frequently read aloud to them, with regular visits the public library, and family vacations abroad. His need for quiet and solitude was always understood. Although he had converted from Judaism to Catholicism, his love for art, drama and literature replaced his spiritual connection to organized religion.

At her parent’s cocktail parties and cook-outs, the girls passed out snack trays to influential authors: from Ann Beattie, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, Elizabeth Hardwick to Jerry Kosinski, Lore Segal and Michael Crichton. Her father had received an award for his criticism (1970-71) and many authors and artists hoped to gain his approval and endorsement for their work. He disdained people who claimed to be poets and artists without any merit or talent, and believed all criticism was for the public good. In print, he could be ruthless, harsh and uncompromising. He was unable to refrain from commenting or be polite. Many people were devastated by his negative reviews. Harold Brodkey, his closest friend, was told that, no, he wasn’t an American Proust. John Updike retaliated against her father in print. Edmund White wrote to Pricilla that her father was one of the first tolerant heterosexuals to befriend him.
When Nesbit filed for divorce, Gilman would come to understand adult subject matters beyond her years. Her father was essentially broke, and depended on the goodwill of his friends for living arrangements until he could secure a position teaching at Yale and afford an apartment. Years later, when her father’s colleagues were writing their memoirs, he had already published “Faith, Sex, Mystery: A Memoir” (1986)—Gilman felt an urgent need to update his life story and legacy, fearing it might be forgotten and lost to history. To her credit, she maintained good relationships with her half-brother Nicholas and they both traveled to Japan as often as possible, to visit their father and step-mother Yasuko Shiojuri Oku during their father’s end of life care from lung cancer. During one visit, she checked her father’s private papers and learned of additional unpleasant truths, yet, her unconditional love for him never changed.

Readers can't help but be encouraged by Gilman’s role in her family as a respectful non-judgmental peacemaker, which served her incredibly well after her own marriage to a fellow PhD graduate ended in divorce. Gilman initially followed a similar path as her father, and became a professor teaching literature at Vassar-- though was never happy or satisfied with a career in academia. Today, she works for the literary agency that was co-founded by her mother. In addition, she enjoys co-parenting her two sons with her former husband, nor is it surprising that they all live in the same building. ** With thanks to W.W. Norton & Company via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

[Katie B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Gilman was a writer, theater critic, and a Yale School of Drama professor. Lynn Nesbit is a successful literary agent. Their daughter, Priscilla Gilman, wrote a memoir about her life growing up in the 1970s and 80s and how it shaped her as an adult. When she was ten years old her parents split up and it of course brought many changes in Priscilla's life. Her perception of her father changed throughout the years and essentially this memoir focuses on coming to terms with it all.

It feels weird to admit I cried multiple times while reading about a complete stranger's life but there was just so much I could relate to in regards to the father-daughter relationship. It takes a huge toll on you as a kid when you believe you are responsible for keeping a parent happy all the time and it's not something you are usually able to recognize is a problem until you get older. I was really impressed how Priscilla was able to tap into that mindset she had as a child. I also identify as the peacekeeper in my family, and this book really stirred up emotions in me which is why it was such a meaningful reading experience.

Incredibly well written. If you enjoy memoirs or books that explore parent/child dynamics, put this one on your to be read list.

Thank you to W.W. Norton and Company for sending me an advance copy! All thoughts expressed are my honest opinion.

[Hughes Rosalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few things here:
1. As a New Yorker who lived on the UWS for 50 years “"much of it around the corner from the Gilmans, Richard Gilman was not a household name to me. Lyn Nesbit, yes, and as I read about Richard certain strings of memory were pulled. I’d heard of virtually all of the dropped names, however.
2. My view of the book was heavily influenced by listening to a recording of it read by Priscilla, herself, a very poor judgement call in my view. Not only is her voice non-mellifluous, it is grating. She reads in halting three word phrases which from page one was annoying and distracting.
3. I have to confess that the content fascinated me, so I feel guilty about giving the book a 2.

Priscilla comes off as a humorless narcissist who gladly throws down her life for her father, patting herself on the back all the time, kind of like tapping her head and rubbing her belly simultaneously. The selfless devotion to her father wore very thin and her self-congratulatory tone regarding saving his life and saving her son’s life and avoiding all the mistakes her parents made became increasingly laughable. I knew from paragraph 1 that she had to be a “Brearley girl” she so perfectly embodied the worst of the stereotypical traits implied by the phrase.

I disliked the book immensely but took great pleasure in so doing.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some things Gilman does well here, but you can't help but shake the feeling that she wants it to be an honest portrait but really it's an attempt to bolster the reputation of her father.

Outside of her parents' divorce (which is pretty awful), Gilman's life is so charmed that it can be difficult to care all that much about how things will go. The name dropping in the early chapters is so intense, it's beyond distracting. It is the kind of memoir where the person tells you about their "modest" weekend house to make sure you know that they are just regular people kind of rich. The kind of memoir where everyone is so thrilled when she gets into Yale even though her father is a professor at Yale. It is a very limited view of the world. It is also clear that Gilman's feelings about the divorce don't allow her to be very objective. A memoir focusing on one parent will always give the other short shrift in some way, but here her father was clearly a pretty awful partner to her mother and yet she does whatever she can to show that this is all her mother's fault. Her mother's behavior is awful, she says inexcusable things, the kind of stuff that makes your jaw drop, so she is certainly no saint. But Gilman holds so tightly to resentment that her mother can't forgive her father, which seems a pretty high bar for a man who cheated on you with dozens (hundreds?) of women, including his own students.

What I did really enjoy was the unabashed love Gilman's father had for his daughters. It's still quite rare to see portraits of caring fatherhood in the world, especially from this time and place, and even more from this kind of public intellectual.

I did the audio and can't really recommend. Gilman's reading was pretty stilted (surprising for someone with a teaching background) and while occasionally getting vocal impressions of people in the book was nice, it wasn't worth the rest.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Priscilla Gilman is the eldest daughter of Richard Gilman, renowned theater critic, and Lynn Nesbit, an accomplished literary agent. She and her sister seem to have everything- a large apartment in NYC and summer home in Connecticut, education at the best schools, and a rotating list of house guests from the theater and literary worlds. At age ten, Priscilla's mother divorces her father, and her world collapses. Her father suffers greatly, and she feels responsible for saving him from a dive into deep depression.
Gilman's writing is evocative and beautiful. I read this memoir in one sitting, as I was wrapped up in the NYC setting and the extensive literary references. Gilman vividly describes growing into this new relationship with her father, working through his fears, and making peace with who he is. The road is not easy, but the results are moving and satisfying.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly and truly do not know how to review this book. As a writer, Ms. Gilman has a way with words that flows easily and interestingly. But the people in this book - oy vey. I didn't like any of them. So are my feelings about the book colored by my dislike of the cold mother, the creepy father (which I sensed even before she revealed her father's sexual predilections), the author's own obsession with her father? The sister was the most relatable and likeable. I finished because of all the great reviews but I cannot say I enjoyed it at all.

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

My book is about the author's father, Richard Gilman, a theater critic, a professor at the Yale School of Drama, and a writer. It is a story about a lost New York, a lost culture, and an era in the arts. Yet, it is a very personal family story about the author's complicated relationship with her demanding father, whom she adored, revered, and then lost. After her parents divorced, the author discovered a secret side and unpleasant truths, yet, her unconditional love for her father never faltered.

The author's writing is beautiful. The first line of the book is, "I lost my father for the first time when I was ten years old." Another quote that grabbed me was when the author wrote, "This insistence on soldiering on through disappointment, trauma, and loss, this buoyant optimism had served me well as I weathered my parents' split, Sarah's illness and death, Benji's special needs, and my father's diagnosis and diminishment, but they came at a cost. I didn't allow myself to truly feel or acknowledge the terror, disorientation, and profound sadness that must have accompanied these situations and experiences, and I certainly didn't share those feelings with others. I feared being a burden. I feared undermining the listener's own well-being. I feared appearing weak and vulnerable rather than strong and capable. I feared not being able to parent effectively if I leaned into or came face to face with my own wounded child. I feared playing anything other than the role I'd been assigned at a very young age, the happy, resilient, reliable one who counseled and supported, cheered up, and calmed others. Even though the role and the self are closely related, even though I'd been chosen for the role because it wasn't a stretch, playing it to the hilt took a toll."

To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...

[Theresa Lorenzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not normally enjoy memoirs because I feel that the person writing doesn't tell the truth about some events or simply ignores them. My question is usually, are they really letting you know what is going on or has gone on in their lives or just making a few bucks from their "life" story?

The same cannot be said of The Critic's Daughter. I absolutely loved this book. Being familiar with Richard Gilman, I was very curious to know if we were going to get to actually know him or just read a rehash of his reviews and criticisms. What we got was a very intimate portrait of a wonderful but tortured man, warts and all. Ms. Gilman shared with us a real portrait of her father as she saw him. No sugarcoating.

This book was a wonderful insight into a wonderful dad, writer, critic and teacher. I hope that the author is planning a memoir of her mother, Lynn Nesbit in the future. I would strongly encourage her to do so.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of memoirs. I love listening to the voices, stories and experiences of others, but admittedly tend to consider the genre a “break” from real reading. “The Critic’s Daughter” is not that kind of book. Instead, it is a uniquely wonderful blend of philosophy, storytelling, and damn EXCELLENT writing. Gilman is a global thinker, mother, artist, ally, and loyal daughter. She’s given her father a profoundly meaningful gift with this book, but she’s given us one as well. Don’t miss this memoir.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intimate memoir, sometimes uncomfortably so, of Gilman’s life and her relationships with her theater-critic father and literary-agent mother. It was fun hearing about Gilman’s childhood, which included bedtime stories read by Toni Morrison, among other literary stars, but I had mixed feelings learning about “Daddy’s” sexual proclivities and her parents’ divorce battles.

[Liz marx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn’t finish

[Vikki]

Not rating. This wasn't for me.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this memoir about her father, Richard Gilman, Priscilla Gilman attempts to convey the many facets of the man: loving and very involved father, ascerbic critic, devoted teacher, but also a man with demons. She's more successful at portraying him as a father, which is not surprising. But if he was as famous as she claims, I would have thought I would have heard of him. She goes into great and, it must be said, often boring detail about the childhood activities of her and her sister. The book becomes more interesting when she goes into therapy and begins to understand that both parents, but especially her father, made Priscilla responsible for his happiness. If Dick was unhappy, it was Priscilla who could jolly him out of it. That makes the child the parent, and that's a terrible thing to do to a child. In addition, both her mother, a powerhouse literary agent, and her father, refused to let Priscilla study acting or voice (in spite of the fact that her father loved musicals and loved when she would sing show tunes). Performances had to be amateur. They refused to allow her to become a professional, insisting that she had to become an academic and a critic, and Priscilla did not rebel but went along with what they wanted. She gets a PhD and a tenure-track job at Vassar, but eventually she realizes that this is not what she wants to do, and she quits her job, joins her mother's agency, and begins writing nonacademic books, like this one. She seems much happier. I'm glad for her, but I can't recommend her book.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A loving tribute to her renown doting father, the author and critic Richard Gilman. Through her parents' divorce, and especially her mother's poisonous comments about her former spouse, the author is always a staunch and unbending defender of her father.

Thanks to Book Browse for this ARC.

[Claudine DelaRosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful memoir I’ve ever read. “Sidda” is such a talented and exquisite writer.

[Enchanted Prose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bravo performance by a virtuoso drama critic’s daughter who played the role of selfless Daddy’s Girl (Manhattan and Connecticut, 1970 – 2018): “Since Daddy left, it seems anything is possible,” writes Priscilla Gilman, who “wished and wished on stars when it came to her father”: brilliant and troubled Richard Gilman, famed dramatic and literary arts “philosopher-critic”; Yale Drama School professor for thirty years; and author of seven books.

“I lost my father for the first time when I was ten years old. In the months and years that followed, I lost him over and over, many times and in many different ways. This book is my attempt to find him,” she explains about the complex man she adored more than anyone else in her world.

Honoring and protecting his legacy while staying true to his conviction that without truth there’s no art a delicate balance she pulls off in grand style, though it took her six years after her father’s death in 2006 to begin a performance of a lifetime. You can’t help but be bowled over by her unwavering devotion to him.

How to navigate treacherous waters when “loyalty is at stake”? Not just to her father, but to her mother: Lynn Nesbit, powerhouse literary agent co-founding Janklow & Nesbit Associates, with a client list a mile long – Joan Didion, Anne Rice, Michael Korda, Michael Crichton, Tom Wolfe, John Le Carre, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (See the full list: https://www.janklowandnesbit.com/peop....)

The sense you get is the drama “enthusiast” for “authenticity” would be melodramatically applauding the authenticity of this exquisitely composed memoir. Well-balancing the “joy and tears” of her profound attachment to a “living, wounded soul” with a “hunger for a larger life.”

Richard Gilman comes through as larger-than-life. Priscilla as selflessness beyond measure – no matter the sacrifices she made to perform the role she’d “been assigned at a very young age”: calmer-in-chief, happy warrior, peacekeeper.

“Without my father, would anyone truly know who I was?” is an interesting question, given the dutiful role she played even when anguished and not being truthful. Ironic for a man who believed the “highest forms of love demands rigorous honesty.” Professionally, yes, but not when it came to his needy, emotional roller-coaster self.

You might assume the commonality between a mother and father’s passion for literature were ingredients for a thriving marriage, yet they divorced when the author was ten. Not then, or afterwards, pretty. The repercussions of a family falling apart are palpable. Excruciatingly devastating for those who couldn’t bear it. Richard Gilman cries, sobs, pleads whereas Lynn Nesbit is a picture of strength, with a “lets-get-on-with-it” attitude.” She seems to have kept the family together until she couldn’t, which the author never forgets.

Richard Gilman could play child as equally well as scholar. A “passionate believer” who “believed in childhood,” he could be so much fun. An avid sports fan too, so the author became one nestled beside him. Nesbit was mostly out-of-the-picture working. Closest with Claire, the author’s slightly younger sister, a “girly girl.” Carrie, the nanny, is credited as a “beacon of stability for us all.”

Nesbit felt Priscilla was “obsessive” about her dad. Her reply implies, how could I not be? “He “made me the thinker, writer, parent, human that I am”? Performing with “preternatural sensitivity,” grace, self-control, and selflessness for her Daddy throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood may have suited her well but it seems mother knows best about the consequences she’d pay. Literature, if nothing else, teaches that.

A stark contrast is shown between a nurturer of the careers of writers yet not seen during their marriage. A “fierce advocate of authors” philosophically pitted against a man renowned as a “ruthless arbiter of their worth.”

Of Claire, the author’s best friend, she says, “Other than my father, there was no one I loved more.” You wince wondering how Nesbit reacted to those words. Like the “cool realist” she’s attributed to here? You’ll appreciate the author’s appreciation of her mother, but that comes much later.

The Critic’s Daughter is a candid assessment of enmeshment between a without-boundaries father-daughter bond. Almost fused together, raising questions on when the line is crossed by a parent too dependent on a child? The child on the parent?

The memoir is both a primer on the role of playfulness and the devastation of divorce. Saturated with adoring love, the book is also a beautiful testament to the emotional power of literature and the performance arts. Priscilla Gilman loves performing and singing, but directed by both parents to pursue an academic life. Achieving notably as an English literature professor at Yale and Vassar, where she was tenured. (Surprisingly, her father wasn’t; at Yale; no doctoral degree). After he died, she gave academia up. The last part of the memoir explains why the courageous change of heart. Brave having received an elite education all her life, she’d attended one of the most prestigious all-girls private schools in the country, the Brearley School, founded in 1884. The alumnae list another Who’s Who. My favorite, Caroline Kennedy.

Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Central Park and Museum Mile was a privileged life, with the burdens and sacrifices offstage. In one of the eye-popping statements, a precious excerpt from the author’s diary, is a list titled, “Things Not to Do When I’m w/Daddy.” First up is “Don’t Cry.” Followed by “Don’t Complain,” “Don’t Be Difficult,” “Don’t Tell Him Anything But Good News,” “Don’t Mention Mommy,” and “Don’t Expect Him to Be the Daddy of Old.” Penned in middle school, it’s stunning and sad that this young girl could be so mature and perceptive of the role she had to play, shaping who she became. How did she manage all that, in light of all that happened?

Claire was the troublemaker constantly aggravating her father as a child; Priscilla, the “easy one,” the “good girl.” The only one of his three children – Nicky, loving son and artist from his first marriage – Richard Gilman knew would unconditionally always give him what he needed. (He loved them all.) Vividly, we see a “little girl who was enraptured by her father’s magical abilities, recognized his vulnerability and addictive tendencies, and feared his inevitable demise.”

Happiness and despair, trust and betrayal, halcyon and tumultuous, are intertwined. As if you can’t have glorious without paying the price.

Richard Gilman’s books include Chekhov’s Plays: An Opening into Eternity; The Making of Modern Drama; and his hot-button memoir Faith, Sex, Mystery (this review by Mary Gordon cited: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/18/bo...), which exposed his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism and his loss of faith, along with his struggles reconciling an existential “romantic soul” with his lust for sexual transgressions, erotic tendencies, gender experimentation.

Considering how much this family read, including to each other, quotes from great literature and poetry are richly infused. Relishing is the roster of writers like Bernard Malamud (Uncle Bern), Toni Morrison (Aunt Toni), Ann Beattie (Aunt Ann), Susan Sontag, and a slew of other writers, playwrights, and students who frequented the Gilman Manhattan home and countryside retreat in Connecticut.

Opening with a Shakespearean quote, “All the World’s a Stage,” befits the man who felt “great plays can be as revelatory of human existence as novels and poems.” Daddy’s Girl turns in a stellar performance like being judged on a stage getting a standing ovation.

Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can we ever really know our parents? That’s the project to which Priscilla Gilman has devoted herself in her compassionate, bracingly candid memoir, THE CRITIC’S DAUGHTER. In her case the task is a formidable one, reflecting on life with her father --- noted drama critic and teacher Richard Gilman. He was a complex man, and Priscilla has honored him with a nuanced portrait that’s both deeply affectionate and profoundly revealing.

Gilman --- who wrote widely for publications that included Commonweal, Newsweek and The Nation, and taught at the Yale School of Drama for some 30 years --- died in 2006 at age 83. But it wasn’t until 2015 that Priscilla, the elder of two daughters from his marriage to prominent literary agent Lynn Nesbit, realized, as she was moved to tears during a performance of “The King and I,” that “I had never been allowed --- and in some ways had never allowed myself --- to truly grieve my father or reckon with his legacy to me. And now I knew I must.”

In truth, as she reveals him, there were two Richard Gilmans. One was the often-unsparing man of letters and champion of avant-garde theater “whose elegant, contentious voice resonated through four decades in American letters, earning him both admirers and enemies of partisan fierceness,” as the New York Times wrote in his obituary. She writes that he was “famous for his ruthless, implacable judgments: No pity, no sympathy, no partiality at all.”

The other was the attentive, playful father who introduced his daughters to the pleasures of classic Broadway musicals (and Priscilla to the mixed blessing of New York Giants football fandom) and could produce a spot-on version of the “Sesame Street” character Super Grover, but also was prone to periods of depression and anger. Life with father could be riotously funny one moment and trying the next. This book is a fully rounded portrayal of what one might consider the public and private Gilman, someone who seemed to don the armor of the fearsome critic to conceal the tenderhearted and often needy human being beneath it.

The tension between these two personalities was at the heart of the demise of the Gilman-Nesbit marriage. To all appearances, theirs was a glittering, successful pairing in the world of New York culture of the 1970s. They counted among their close friends writers like Bernard Malamud, Susan Sontag, Toni Morrison, Joan Didion and her husband, John Dunne, and were part of the active social life in their circle.

Married in 1966, they separated in 1980, when Priscilla was 10, after Nesbit abruptly decided to end their union. Their bitter fight over financial issues (Nesbit had money, and Gilman badly needed it) dragged on for nine years. In his 1986 memoir, FAITH, SEX, MYSTERY --- one of his seven books --- in addition to describing his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism, which he abandoned after only eight years, Gilman details some of the marital transgressions, including multiple affairs (some with his Yale students), that contributed to Nesbit’s action, as well as describing his unusual sexual proclivities. But above all, it seems, she had grown weary of supporting a man who, for all the attention he showered on his daughters (and a son from his first marriage), she’d never truly loved. She viewed him as dependent on her success and an impediment to advancing the burgeoning literary career to which she single-mindedly devoted her energy.

Out of the divorce, as Priscilla Gilman describes it, the task of sustaining her father fell to her, a young girl who did her best --- and largely succeeded --- in carrying it off. In heartrending scenes, she describes the visits that she and her sister, Claire, would pay to her father in one dreary sublet after another on the Upper West Side after he was banished from the family apartment and a country home in Weston, Connecticut, that had been the scene of countless joyful weekend and holiday visits.

At one point Gilman told Priscilla and Claire that if it were not for them, he would consider killing himself. Priscilla never took that as an idle comment. “My father’s survival was my responsibility,” she writes. “And I would do any and everything in my power, use every ounce of my energy and ingenuity and love, to make sure he survived.”

But her unstinting support came at a considerable price that she only began to reckon with years later, after she entered college at Yale, pursued a PhD in English literature that she eventually abandoned, married (later divorcing, though much more amicably than her parents), and gave birth to two sons. The book provides an excruciating textbook on the damage that an acrimonious divorce can inflict on innocent children. In that regard it’s no coincidence that the film Kramer vs. Kramer, whose co-star Meryl Streep had been a student of Gilman’s at Yale, became for her “a kind of sacred text that I studied, immersed myself in, for solace, catharsis, wisdom, validation.”

After his divorce was finalized, as he approached his 70th birthday, Gilman improbably found the love of his life, Yasuko Shiojiri, an English professor who served as his guide on a teaching trip to Japan. They overcame significant obstacles to marry in 1992, and Gilman spent a good portion of his final years with his soul mate in their apartment in Kyoto, especially after he received a terminal cancer diagnosis in 1997 that he somehow defied for nine years.

In capturing the essence of its challenging subject, THE CRITIC’S DAUGHTER is a rare combination of honesty, warmheartedness and exquisite writing. As both fair-minded prosecutor and tenacious defense attorney, Priscilla Gilman scrupulously placed her father’s manifold strengths and obvious flaws on the balance scale and finds that the weight of the evidence tips decidedly in his favor. The audience for this drama can be grateful that she has chosen to share so many scenes of his painful, beautiful life with us. What’s undeniable is that Richard Gilman would be proud of the eloquence and grace with which she has done it.

Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

[E]

I was just selected as a GoodReads giveaway winner for this book and I'm so excited to learn about Priscilla's story. Thanks so much for selecting me!

[Mediaman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a real yawner. It's hard to know how supposedly well-educated English professor Priscilla Gilman could take what seems to be the fascinating life story of her father and turn it into a boring mess. The biography/memoir rarely goes into any depth, with the author remaining emotionally distant from the subject matter while skipping past some shocking revelations.

Richard Gilman was a theater critic and in New York City that apparently meant that he was a cream-of-the-crop, top-of-the-heap magazine writer. His status will mean little to most anyone outside NYC, and his daughter grossly overhypes him in these pages, failing to understand that few people outside Manhattan are mesmerized by the elitist affairs of New York creative types. It's an incestuous groups of overpaid partiers and cheaters who look down their noses at the little people in the rest of society.

Not a whole lot happens in the book. From a distance she sees her father become famous after he releases his titillating memoir in which he admits to leaving his Catholic faith in order to have wild BDSM sex with women he's not married to. Doesn't that sound fascinating? Well, we'll never know because Priscilla didn't take the time to ask him about it, nor ask anyone who knew him. THAT would have made a great book, to have a daughter pursue her father's dark and secretive sexual past.

Then, near the end, as he is dying and tells her he wants to release one more book about his life of bedding "hundreds of women and a few men," the very adult Priscilla again freezes, refusing to ask him or anyone else about this new revelation of his male sexual relations. She simply decides to skip over it, like she never heard it.

So she misses the opportunity to dig into his past, talk with his lovers, uncover his lies, figure out his sexuality, and discover who he was when he wasn't presenting his show as a family men. I'll say it again, THAT would have made a great book. And that takes work from a real author. Instead Priscilla goes the lazy route and fills the book with shows they went to together, where they ate, and visits they had to his post-divorce apartment. You know, the really exciting stuff?!

This is a snoozer. She has a horrible mother who eventually admits that she only married her father because the man she was truly in love with got a woman pregnant and got married. Oh, okay. The single paragraph devoted to that SHOULD have been expanded to at least a chapter in which she dug up details on the man, his family, and then confronted her mother. The complex woman who birthed her was a complete hypocrite and enabler who pitted father against daughters. That, too, would have been interesting to dissect. But, no, that great book is not what is presented here either.

Most hilarious is how she claims that her father is a devoted liberal and rebel who believes in "total freedom," yet he and the family are all locked into emotional dungeon filled with stereotypes, intolerance toward commoners, and the trivial. She has such great admiration for him, but it's all a mirage. Just as is her coming out of college choosing to take a job at Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, admiring him for his pro-feminist stances. Right. The guy who abused his power of office, lied under oath, and sexually demeaned an intern he forced into giving him a blowjob. That great guy? Good job standing up for feminism, Priscilla!

The book is written so distantly and carefully, that you'll laugh when for the sixth times she talks about crying her eyes out at a movie or TV show. Kramer vs. Kramer sets her off (even though Meryl Streep is often a guest at her house! Ha!). West Side Story brings her to her knees bawling. The Wizard of Oz sends her to her room in fits (and she's an adult!). Seriously? On paper, Priscilla Gilman comes across as cold-hearted and detached from the reality of the world around her, yet too emotionally caught up in the fiction of literature or theater that her father was so focused on criticizing. Why isn't her passion being poured into the pages about her family instead of fake characters on the screen or stage?

While there are moments in the book that tug at your heart, and there is a strong pro-family message in there somewhere (her father fought the divorce and was devastated by the breakup of the family more than his wife divorcing him), the approach taken is so distant and lacking any objective supporting information that it amounts to simply the author's chance to respond to her father's own well-considered memoir. Riding his coattails hoping for a bestseller maybe? Ultimately it's a failure and the daughter deserves all the criticism.

[DeLauné Michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

COULD NOT PUT DOWN!The Critic's Daughter: A Memoir
Last weekend, I let myself get lost in The Critic's Daughter. The hours flew by, and I barely looked up from its pages, except to sip my tea. It was a stupendous joy to live in the book with author and her incredible father. I felt that I got to know and love the exceptional, brilliant, funny, warm, loyal, human, and loving man he was. This is a rare divorce memoir, a kind of miraculous bubble that lets the reader experience that magical world of the literati in New York from the exceptional view of a highly observant child.
I dog-eared, underlined, exclamation pointed, and shed tears on sooo many sentences, passages, and pages. Mr. Gilman was that unicorn of a father, one that completely embraced the author's and her sister's childhoods, playing imaginatively and creatively. It was so refreshing to read that, particularly at the time that he did that, way before stay-at-home dads become somewhat of a norm. I adored all of the passages that described the playing, and jokes, and voices, and caretaking that her father did. I wish more dads would read this as a guide! I very much related to having a mother who controlled the narrative of the child's experience of her parents’ divorce, and it was heartbreaking to read about the deep loneliness of that. But there was also joy. Please don't miss the section about the author's letter when she was a child to a famous baseball player, so sweet and dear. It included the line "We'll be happy again." It had me in tears. It could have been an alternate title for this memoir. It was fascinating reading how the author had to continue to navigate the difficulties of having divorced parents well into her adulthood, particularly walking herself down the aisle instead of choosing between the parents. The terrible gifts of divorce never stop giving. Towards the end, I didn’t just cry, but sobbed during the section about the author and sister watching West Side Story as children, and what that experience meant for her. The way she connected it to her father was so beautiful. And then the book comes full circle with her children comforting her, as she did for her father, in a remarkable scene at the very end with them telling her, “Mommy, you still have us!” and “Your father was a true friend and a good writer, too, Mommy.” It ends with a stunning poem the author wrote at age 9 about loneliness comparing it to “a grey sky no one looks at,” Best description of that terrible state I've ever read. This memoir is a gorgeous, generous gift, a fascinating, enthralling read, and I feel so enriched and moved to have read it.

[Jane Savoca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Critic’s Daughter: A Memoir examines a complex relationship between a father and a daughter while taking us on a ride back in time with characters that can only be described as New York City’s intelligentsia. Gilman does a superb job of nestling us in her glamorous childhood with her larger than life father, a respected theater critic and Yale Drama School professor. He’s described as both brilliant and a force of nature but he’s also a deeply caring hands-on father. Her mother has many demands on her as the principle breadwinner but Gilman is honest in telling us she lacks her father’s natural aptitude for connecting with children.

The author is equally effective in showing us the collapse of this family, a feat all the more impactful because of our investment in them. A bitter divorce not only physically separates her from her father but it exposes fault lines in both her parents. Her father expresses to her that he is living only for his girls and this confession orients Gilman to pleasing and hiding emotions. Her mother reveals her father’s many weaknesses to her daughter both passively and directly. This of course is just as revealing about the mother.

Gilman is adept in showing us how this disruption shapes her as a young woman. And she manages to show us how her father triumphs and stumbles in his second act following the divorce.

As someone raised on the other end of the northeast corridor during the same time period, the nostalgia of reliving the days where we wore romantic Laura Ashley dresses and watched Fantasy Island was a delight. Gilman celebrates Sesame Street which not only was the preschool for us folks born around 1970, it became a lodestar for us for the rest of our lives. The book is a peek into the windows of the well-appointed upper West Side apartment (and Connecticut country house) where we thought the members of the family had it all only to realize that they were struggling too. Albeit with crowded bookshelves, complete with library ladder.

I loved this book not only as a love letter to a deeply missed father but as a reminder that we can forgive and transcend our parents’ frailties and the mark those frailties leave on us. Strongly recommend you read Priscilla Gilman’s beautifully written book about her father.

[Ed Romanoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Critic's Daughter by Priscilla Gilman is poetic, lyrical and devastating.

From the outside the life Priscilla Gilman describes seems like a dreamy moment in time when the manhattan was at its gritty finest. The dizzying cast of characters that were a part of their daily life portrayed true literary icons seeking approval from Richard Gilman, who was their ultimate judge and jury. A glimpse behind the scenes of dinner parties with famous authors dazzles and as the curtain draws back we find ourselves falling in shock from a series of revelations. I have rarely gasped or cried (several times!) while reading non-fiction yet some of the experiences described by the author are leveling to the reader.

The Critic's Daughter reads as an epic cautionary tale where the true pursuit of artistic integrity turns to power and the mighty falling from grace.. There is no joy in Richard Gilman's demise. And one can feel this is not the author's intent. This book is a reminder of the humanity within us all and our hope to improve our lot, while managing our flaws, and attempting to leave a meaningful legacy.

It is easy to identify with the burden Priscilla Gilman carries, the weight of the competent child, soothing all to the point of exhaustion, leaving nothing left in the tank for herself. The heart breaks thinking of a young teenager having to soothe her father whose fortunes had changed so dramatically due to divorce. Her list of things to avoid discussing with 'daddy'

Lessons abound in this book. At many points Richard Gilman seems to be the ideal father, hardly a critic at all with his children, the playful 'Great Finder' and we admire his dogged focus on originality versus what we're taught to think is 'good.' Priscilla Gilman does not dust over her tracks in an effort to enhance her father's image. The book is a blunt revelation of personal challenge. Yet, despite his distractions, Richard Gilman emerges a father we could live with and even admire.

The book is infused with music as well as a daughter's genuine willingness to embrace sports to foster a deep connection with her father. Having seen Priscilla do a reading at a book festival she was a stand out then and is a stand out now as someone to read and re-read.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess that before reading this book, I had never heard of the author's father, Richard Gilman, though I now know that he was a leading light in New York intellectual circles of his time. On the other hand, I certainly had heard of her mother, Lynn Nesbit, a famous New York literary agent. The laundry list of great contemporary authors who populated Ms. Gilman's childhood is amazing. I have had enough exposure to famous artists to know that many of them are not the kind of people you would want to hang out with, but this list of people was so amazing that I couldn't help having some pangs of jealousy. How might my life have been different if I had been brought up in New York intellectual circles instead of in Central Kentucky? Hard to say. Maybe it wouldn't have been any better.

But the society in which Ms. Gilman grew up is not at the heart of what this book is about. It's really a tribute to her dad as a mostly great father who she deeply loved. He was a doubtlessly brilliant man who had a strong postive influence on his children, his students and the world of writers, but he was sometimes harsh, was secretive, serially unfaithful and difficult, and had a tendency to avoid and gloss over problems. His postives greatly outweigh his negatives, and though he has ups and downs, his life is presented as being very well lived. Her mother does not come off as well, admitting to her daughter at one point that she had never loved Richard and being unremittingly harsh in her judgment of him after their divorce in ways that damaged Richard and her children. Still she seems to have been a kind, supportive and generally loving mother, even if not necessarily a mother that we would all wish for.

This story about parent child relations is an open invitation to all of us to reexamine our own relationships with our parents and children. I definitely felt some parallels between Richard Gilman and my own brilliant but eccentric father, and I could see some of my behaviors with my own children in both the good and bad sides of his parenting. There were many, many differences, but also parallel features that I think almost anyone would find relatable.

[Kate Benessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. I was excited to read this book. It appeared to be just the kind of thing I would love. Populated by New York City intellectuals and literati in the 1970s, with liberal use of quotes from great authors as well as her father’s work, and most promising of all, an introductory list of “Forty Characters in Search of My Father” ranging from King Lear to Kermit the Frog. With chapters organized into dramatic Acts, I thought the structure would be built around the list of characters, but they were little more than references intermittently dropped in.

Still, I looked forward to my second night of reading when after a few pages I became aware of her writing style and use of redundancies. She employs the Rule of Three (and often four or more) so pervasively it becomes ponderous.

“I saw the humanity, the frailty [2] of these powerful intellectuals, these imposing authors, these cultural figures [3]. I saw them hurt, frightened, rejected, confused, angry, lost [6].”

“But even as he made a name for himself by being discerning, hard to please, hypercritical [3], my father was also and always [2] an enthusiast, a passionate believer [2].

A little bit of this adds richness, but too much feels like a lack of editing. It’s so pervasive it started to feel like I was just reading lists of synonyms.

So much of it was unnecessary: “At our New York City apartment, his office — a tiny maid’s room filled with filing cabinets, paper, and clouds of thick cigarette and cigar smoke —…” I would assume a writer’s office would have filing cabinets and papers! And did it really add to my mental picture to learn there was both cigarette and cigar smoke? If it happened infrequently, I would not have noticed this sentence, but I was becoming increasingly irritated and this sentence put me over the edge. My high school English teacher would have circled it and written “Redundant!”

Once I saw this I couldn’t unsee it. I was interested in her story so I kept reading, but I became increasingly distracted, wanting to edit passages. This pulled me out of the story and broke the spell of reading. I’m sorry to say, I could not finish this book.

[Nel · Rating 4 out of 5]

📚Happy Pub Day Priscilla Gilman!!!📚

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘'𝙨 𝘿𝙖𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙚𝙧, 𝙗𝙮 𝙋𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙖 𝙂𝙞𝙡𝙢𝙖𝙣

𝙋𝙪𝙗 𝘿𝙖𝙩𝙚: 𝙏𝙊𝘿𝘼𝙔 2/7/22

Well, quite honestly, this will quite likely be my most intimidating review: a review for a critic's memoir, who is also the daughter of a famous critic, herself. I will do my best to "𝒂𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒂𝒅𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 - 𝒉𝒂𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 - [𝑹𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝑮𝒊𝒍𝒎𝒂𝒏] 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘𝒔."

This tender tribute to her Daddy would be a salve to any father's ears. It is a daunting and delicate task for a daughter from a divorced family to write a memoir about one parent held so dear, without aggrieving the other parent. But Priscilla Gilman did so with such sensitivity, that the reader comes away with a sense of understanding and affection for both parents, while forming a deep affection for her father.

I'll admit, memoirs are not my favorite genre, simply because I struggle with the voyeuristic element of these books and I certainly don't look forward to reviewing such personal work. However, Ms. Gilman writes with such honesty and authenticity, that I couldn't help but be drawn into her and her father's story. I was completely immersed in the beatnik scene in New York, having just recently visited the city for the first time myself.

This particular quote rings very true for me as a fellow Daddy's girl:

"𝑴𝒚 𝒇𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒛𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔, 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒖𝒍𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆, 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒂 𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒓𝒄𝒆 𝒂𝒅𝒗𝒐𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒐𝒓 𝒇𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎."

Many thanks to W.W. Norton & Company for sharing this uniquely appealing memoir!

Please check out more of my reviews on my book blog at www.mamasgottaread.blogspot.com or follow me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/mamasgottaread .

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Gilman, the influential drama and literary critic who was revered for his elegantly written, perceptive, and often bluntly honest reviews, was the adoring father who presided over the magical early childhood of Priscilla Gilman and her younger sister, Claire. Sustained financially by their mother, the esteemed literary agent Lynn Nesbit, the family was frequently visited by Toni Morrison, Anne Rice, Michael Crichton, and others of similar legendary stature in the literary world. However, Gilman's life veered into dramatically different territory when her parents announced their separation to her and her sister when they were ages ten and nine. Gilman's efforts to maintain her perceived role as the family peacekeeper in the aftermath of her parents' separation and through the long, contentious divorce that followed are heart-rending.

Having clearly inherited her father's penchant for creating exquisite, candid, penetrating, illuminating prose, Gilman presents an intricate, nuanced portrait of the troubled, brilliant, genuinely caring man she comes to know as she grows through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. Set mainly in New York's Upper West Side of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, the story unfolds in carefully crafted detail, including outer scenes and inner landscapes. The book is rich with multilayered detail.

Gilman's story is altogether her own. But you don't have to grow up with famous parents to have had a childhood peopled by flawed adults who expressed their love in difficult, sometimes devastating ways. This book is a meaningful, rewarding poignant, and ultimately uplifting read for anyone who has ever loved a complicated person. And that is all of us.

[kglibrarian (Karin Greenberg) · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the beginning of this book, I felt a kinship with the author. The details of my life with my own father differ greatly from Gilman's, but I had a similar attachment to my father, who died at age 54. Her descriptions of her relationships beautifully highlight the complexities that exist within any family.

Gilman grew up on the Upper West Side, where her parents were part of the literary scene. She had people like Joan Didion over to dinner. She writes about that time period of the 70s with precision, evoking the songs, shows, and cultural vibe of the decade. When she was still young, her parents separated, throwing her father into a state of emotional instability. Though he continued his job as a professor of drama at Yale, he relied on his daughters to uplift him and give him purpose. Priscilla felt the weight of her father's neediness, placing a huge burden on herself to secure his mental health. Not long after the split, her mother shares shocking details about her father's personal life that send Priscilla into a state of confusion and conflicting emotions. As she grows into a teen and then a young woman, she desperately tries to fit the pieces of her parents' marriage together to make sense.

Written with warmth, honesty, and insight, Gilman doesn't hold back as she shares her innermost thoughts and feelings. Her story is filled with literary references, including excerpts from her father's books. She doesn't shy away from the difficult specifics of mental and physical illness, sharing her conflicting feelings on all aspects of her family's experiences.

This memoir was a unique mixture of emotional, familial intimacy and stimulating academic study. I was sad to see it end.

[Ivy Kaprow · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🎧- I actually had no idea who Priscilla Gilman was when I started this, nor had I ever heard of her father Richard Gilman, a theater critic and drama professor at Yale. Normally I wouldn’t read a memoir of someone I didn’t know, but I saw a review from one of my friends and decided to give it a listen.
Priscilla grew up in NYC during the late 70’s and 80’s. She had always been close to her father and after her parents tumultuous divorce she was put in a position of being the caretaker to her father and confidant to her mother. Never wanting to upset either parent she gave them each exactly what they needed while never fully being true to herself. I found Priscilla’s story to be heartbreaking. She had a very codependent relationship with her father and no child should be put in the position of needing to parent their parent. Despite that, this is really a love letter to her father. Filled with memories of her Dad from the time she was little until she was a parent herself Priscilla shows us how deep the love ran for both of them.
While I love listening to memoirs narrated by the author I wish I had read this one instead. Ms. Gilman includes several works of her father and it was hard to discern when she was reading those as opposed to her own words.
As codependent as her relationship was with her father, there was something rather endearing about him. I am so happy Ms. Gilman has shared him with those of us who never knew who this great theater critic was.

[Elizabeth A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exquisitely written memoir by the daughter of the late acclaimed drama and theater critic Richard Gilman grew on me until by the second half I couldn't put it down. Though the writer is ten years younger than I (and unlike the author, I had happily married parents,) Gilman lyrically recounts growing up in a Manhattan I remember very well, with the same schools, neighborhoods, restaurants, books, plays, and cultural touchstones. In fact, the book opens with a glossary entitled "Forty Characters in Search of My Father," which include old friends like Holden Caulfield, Big Bird, Willy Wonka, Drosselmeyer, The Wizard (from Baum,) The Velveteen Rabbit, Tony from West Side Story, King Lear, E.B. White's Wilbur, Uncle Vanya, and so on; and as she tries to anatomize the challenging, loving relationship she had with her father these characters are woven in and out of the narrative to help explain its at times fraught dynamic. Some readers complain about her name dropping as well as the initial demonizing of her mother, the literary agent Lynn Nesbitt, but my answer to that is she is telling her life -- this is not fiction but autobiographical memoir -- and thus those complaints feel misplaced. I wept at the end from her father's death from Stage 4 lung cancer and from the piercing rendering of a daughter's grieving. A beautifully written evocation of a time and place in NYC and of a family where the life of the mind ruled paramount.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Lesson In Love
This story read like a puzzle of a dughter's love for her father (family). When pieced together all the memories and the vignettes of time they formed a huge heart that beat out pure adoration.
Priscilla revealed her loyalty to her family early in her life. She protected her sister from the messiness of her parents relationship, She held an overwhelming responsibility for her father's happiness and she also played into her mother's contempt for her husbands actions by listening and acting the dutiful daughter.

Priscilla's parents did not show physical love to each other and so it was difficult to extract any deep understanding of their marriage. Her attachment and faith in her father was continually fueled by his vivid imagination and magical qualities. She aligned herself with him through words and creativity, through their fondness of art and support of clever friends. This is a story about a child who had parents more committed to their individual artistic endeavors than the growth, maturation and mindful stability of their children. Priscilla adapted to her surroundings, leaned into the comforting occasions, recognized personality shifts and formed both a cushion and a bond. She did the best she could and drew strength from her father's knowledge that only fools knew everything.