DAD, LOVE, ME

A memoir of difficult reconciliation.

Novelist Quick (The Silver Linings Playbook, 2008) grapples with a fraught relationship with his father, who now suffers from dementia. In chapters that alternate between letters directed to that father and more objective scenes from his life, both from the last few years and earlier, Quick wrestles with feelings of “rage and shame” and with the sense that he wants to make peace with his father before it’s too late. He describes with raw intensity the experience of cutting radically back on alcohol and taking up running, only to find himself afflicted by writer’s block, a stalled career, the sense that “the screaming inside of me just kept getting louder and louder,” and the feeling that ending his life might be the only solution. What saved him, according to his account, was 700 hours and counting of Zoom-based Jungian analysis with a man he calls Zeus. Several of the chapters recount their sessions in fascinating detail. Rather than taking a chronological approach to his subject, Quick moves back and forth in time, using a novelist’s skill to home in on particular scenes and to explore their implications, for better or worse. One chapter delves into his despair about losing a beloved hat at a movie theater; another, into his mixed emotions about watching with his “sundowning” father as their beloved Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl. Warning the reader of what’s to come, he alternates between grueling evocations of his past and more measured ones of more recent years. For all its heavy subject matter, the book has a remarkably light touch and sense of grace. In addition to recounting his own experience, Quick draws inspiration from helping those men who might have the same sort of struggles with their own fathers.

A poignant account of not-quite-finished business.