The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father

by Mary Gordon

Book Overview

In The Shadow Man, the bestselling author of Final Payments and The Company of Women elevates the memoir into an uncompromising and unforgettable art form as she seeks to learn the truth about her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679749314
• ISBN13: 9780679749318
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating memoir of ambivalence

This book is very much in the same vein as Geoffrey Wolff's Duke of Deception... a man who was a failure as a person yet a loving father. A chilling portrait of the ambivalence of knowing one's imperfect parent.

A journey to understand life - interesting and sweet.

I've read all Mary Gordon's fiction work. I picked this up after a few years on my get this when it's in paperback list. As someone who lost her father as a young child, I found it fascinating how Mary was able to find out so much about her father. And couldn't we all do better knowing our parents this well even in life?! It was a wonderful to find out about his life, even though she she didn't like all she found. Yes there are some slow, almost tedious sections when she writes about his writing. But how she comes to grips with all of the secrets and history and still has unconditional love for him makes me feel better about this world. What a lesson she has passed to her children, and her lucky readers.

A Daughter's Search for Her Father

This book tells the story of Mary Gordon's search to find out about her father who died when she was a little girl. She skillfully weaves together the two aspects of her search. One part of her quest involves researching documents to try to piece together the facts of his life. She finds some things that she would rather not have known, such as his anti-Semitic writings and the fact that he published a pornographic magazine. Then, as she delves into his family history, she is able to understand even these parts of his life. The other part of her search involves the scrutiny of her childhood memories to try to reconcile the man she remembers with the man she has found in her research. This aspect of the book really touched me because Gordon was able to capture so well the essence of childhood memories. She speaks of the difference in how her father looked to her as a child (dashing and handsome) and the man in the photographs she has from that time (a man who refused to wear his dentures and bought his shoes several sizes too large.) Finally she is able to combine the man from her research with the man from her memory to form a loving and sympathetic picture of her father. At the end of the book, Gordon writes eloquently of her feelings for her mother. She tells of her mother's deteriorating health and how she has live in a nursing home. She also speaks of the contrast between her aged mother suffering from severe memory loss and her father who is forever young in her mind. She admits that she often wishes her mother's life were over while at the same time she has wished all her life that her father was alive again. Gordon portrays so dramatically this contrast between the aged dependent mother who is living without memories of the past, and the young energetic father who lives only in his daughter's memory. In the end, she is able to give her father one final gift--a gift which requires a great deal of courage on her part. Mary Gordon has a rare talent--she is able to remember exactly what it feels like to be a child. She expresses in this book things that I have felt but could never have put into words. It has been a long time since a book has touched me the way this one did