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The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir

Honor Moore

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Jul 26, 2008 Kate rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir

The first half was slow for me--too many details that I wasn't gripped by. I realize, though, that this is because I'd read about the book in advance and was waiting for more about the relationship between her and her father--and the revelation of her father's bisexuality (which, in a way, corresponded with her own . . . reminding me of Alison Bechdel's brilliant graphic memoir, Fun Home).

I was very moved by the second half--and then saw the whole book as a complicated homage to her father, as w The first half was slow for me--too many details that I wasn't gripped by. I realize, though, that this is because I'd read about the book in advance and was waiting for more about the relationship between her and her father--and the revelation of her father's bisexuality (which, in a way, corresponded with her own . . . reminding me of Alison Bechdel's brilliant graphic memoir, Fun Home).

I was very moved by the second half--and then saw the whole book as a complicated homage to her father, as well as an important exploration of sexuality in relationship to religion.

Of course this is very complicated since she "outs" her father. He was a well-known New York Episcopal bishop who fathered 7 children and had been having sex surreptitiously with men for most of his life. Moore demonstrates what a toll this hidden life took on both her father and his family.

And yet she also points out how this hidden anguish made him in many ways more compassionate and progressive. I love that take because so often suppressed or hidden gayness is portrayed as turning someone into a homophobe. Instead, in the bishop's case--in addition to being harmful, it may have fostered a certain goodness in him. That's a very important story to tell.

Apparently, some of her siblings don't see it this way. Some are upset that she revealed this family secret (even though both their mother and father are dead). In the New Yorker, they write: "We wish that our sister Honor Moore had grappled, in her memoir of our father, Bishop Paul Moore, with the ethical dilemma of 'outing' a man whose public legacy is great, whose private life he chose to keep private, and whose personal agony often estranged him from many of us who loved him."

It makes me feel they didn't read the book. I think she does grapple with this throughout the memoir, especially toward the end. And yet, I can empathize with the fact that his adult children are very tender about it all. It's hard for those who lived through the stories you tell to recognize that everyone has a right to craft her own version of events. We own our lives and our subjectivity.

Being a writer and a memoirist, I think a lot about the ethics of "telling all." What seems to me crucial is to not tell all for the salacious sake of it, but to write well and deeply about our humanness. That is what Honor Moore has done. ...more

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May 21, 2008 Marie marked it as to-read

Oct 16, 2009 Leah marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Apr 19, 2016 Megan marked it as to-read

Shelves: short-listed-and-finalists, memoirs

Mar 30, 2021 Sierra marked it as to-read

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