A Father's Words

By Richard G. Stern and Richard Stern

Book Overview

Cy Riemer--fifty-ish, divorced, and father of four--surveys the dispersal of his family with a mixture of anxiety, humor, sadness, and pride. In this wry, moving, and wise novel, Richard Stern offers his masterful portrait of Cy as the quintessential caring yet controlling parent, a relentless seeker of self-knowledge whose search is intensified through conflicts with his brilliant, ne'er-do-well son Jack. The "manipulation of a smart, sane, self-justifying narrator . . . is not the least of Stern's achievements in this delicate fabrication of tough prose and tender adjustment of sentiment."--Geoffrey Wolff, Los Angeles Times

"Richard Stern's novels are robustly intelligent, very funny, and beguilingly humane. He knows as much as anyone writing American prose about family mischief, intellectual shenanigans, love blunders--and about writing American prose."--Philip Roth

"A delectable rhetorical display. . . . "--The New Yorker

"Anyone who has read Richard Stern's previous novels won't need to be told he is an unusually crisp and intelligent writer, with a sharp edge to his wit; and in A Father's Words he runs true to form. Many of the book's pleasures are incidental: jokes, intellectual cadenzas, agile turns of phrase . . . The author's powers of farcical invention climax in a brilliant, bitter episode where . . . the younger man proclaims his final failure . . . Mr. Stern has written an excellent novel."--John Gross, New York Times

"Richard Stern is American letters' unsung comic writer about serious matters . . . A Father's Words] produced in this reviewer an apostolic desire to convince a wider audience to try Stern, especially the vintage Stern."--Doris Grumbach, Chicago Tribune

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226773221
• ISBN13: 9780226773223
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Judging This Book by What Kind of Dad We Would Like to Have

I found this book to be very interesting and well-written. Judging its literary merit by asking ourselves if we would like to have a father who says what this father says is like judging Moby Dick based on whether we would want to sail with Captain Ahab. A character's believability seems a more important factor than his likability, doesn't it? And this father's crabbed view of the world is vital to the story.