Synopses & Reviews
Praise for Fatherless Women
"If it can be said about a book on loss, Fatherless Women is a pleasure to read. Clea Simon is a warm, honest, intelligent, and trustworthy guide, not only for grieving women but for the men who support them. Simons insights about father-daughter relationships are profound."Neil Chethik, author of FatherLoss
"Clea Simon deepens our understanding of the complicated emotions daughters feel about fathers, both during life and especially after death. This book will help heal rifts and set these stuck energies free."Beth Witrogen McLeod, author of Caregiving: The Spiritual Journey of Love, Loss, and Renewal
"Unusually candid and often provocative ...Simons book is immensely thought-provoking about a topic that all of us will face."Pauline Boss, Ph.D., author of Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief
"A book filled with compelling stories of not only mourning, heartbreak, and struggle, but also gratitude, liberation, and joy. Grief, Clea Simon reminds us, is as complex as the love that gave rise to it, and a fathers legacy unfolds, changes, and deepens over time."Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House: A Memoir
"This book is an important addition to the literature about the highly charged relationship of daughters and fathers that offers insight, hope, and compassion."Patricia Reis, author of Daughters of Saturn: From Fathers Daughter to Creative Woman
Praise for Mad House
"An evocative, sensitive, and beautifully crafted memoir ...Absorbing and moving."Kirkus Reviews
"A strong, fascinating work."Boston Phoenix
"A moving memoir ...The cycles of hope and despair are portrayed with the harrowing precision of Dante."Boston Globe
Review
Boston Globe journalist Simon draws on her own experiences, as well as those of women she has interviewed, to examine the relationship between father and daughter and the changes that occur when a father dies. Although interesting for its personal insights and backed by the interviews and a bibliography, this is not a scholarly work and should be read as the author's personal reflections. Chapters explore the grief process and the life changes that can follow, affecting marriages, work choices, and bonds between mothers and daughters. Readers are also shown the complexity of father-daughter relationships and how daughters learn to reconcile sometimes opposing influences after a father's death. Because the author was 31 when her father died and her interviewees were mostly in their twenties, thirties, and forties, many of the emotional changes cited here could have come about simply as a apart of maturation. Those who lose their fathers very early in life, as well as the 50 percent who lose them after they turn 50, would probably not experience a father's death in the same way. Suitable for large public libraries. (
Library Journal, September 15, 2001)
When Fathers die, says Simon (Mad House), a Boston Globe journalist, their daughters may experience crucial changes in their lives. Some will feel freed of their father's expectations and strictures. Some will want to have a baby. Some will already have worked out their issued with their dads years earlier and will simply feel grief at the loss of a parent. Some will forge a whole new relationship with their mother, if she's still living. Everything is possible, and may depend on the daughter's sexuality and age, on whether the parents were divorced or unhappy with each other. Or none of these things may happen, or if they do, they may not depend on the aforementioned factors. Such rampant indeterminacy is meant to sound embracing and supportive; instead, it reads like equivocal psychobabble. Despite plenty of valid and judicious observations ("When we lose a parent, we move up a step in the generational hierarchy), the narrative feels flat and unsubstantiated. Simon writes mostly based on her own experience of her father's death and has also talked to friends and read some popular psychology books on fathers and daughters and on death and grieving. Her friends' experiences are used to illutrate some of the ways paternal death affects daughters, while experts are invoked to give the book some clout. (Oct.) (Publishers Weekly, September 15, 2001)
Synopsis
The bond between father and daughter is undeniably special and often undeniably complicated. When that bond is broken by death, a womans life and sense of self can change in profound, unexpected, and even confusing ways. Now Clea Simon, critically acclaimed author of Mad House, explores this crucial meeting point of grief and growth by delving into her own experience and those of other women to paint an illuminating portrait of the father-daughter relationship and its lifelong ramifications.
Filled with moving first-person stories, this powerful book reveals the ways emotional and life changes may be shadowed by a fathers death. From new patterns in careers and intimate relationships to changes in friendships and even feelings about motherhood, such shifts can be both guilt- and anger-provoking, and also often liberating. As many women find, the period following a fathers death can be a time of critical personal development and discoveryabout oneself as well as the man whose influence and legacy remain deeply present.
The majority of women will lose their fathers before the age of fifty, during the busiest, most productive years of their lives. This poignant, comforting, and insightful book paves the way for them, and for all women, to make peace with the past and with the adults they have become, and to face the question: What happens next?
Synopsis
"Elegant prose ... sheds new light on the father-daughter dynamic"
-Boston magazine
Praise for Fatherless WOMEN
"If it can be said about a book on loss, Fatherless Women is a pleasure to read. Clea Simon is a warm, honest, intelligent, and trustworthy guide, not only for grieving women but for the men who support them. Simon's insights about father-daughter relationships are profound."
-Neil Chethik, author of FatherLoss
"Clea Simon deepens our understanding of the complicated emotions daughters feel about fathers, both during life and especially after death. This book will help heal rifts and set stuck energies free."
-Beth Witrogen McLeod, author of Caregiving:
The Spiritual Journey of Love, Loss, and Renewal
"Unusually candid and often provocative . . . Simon's book is immensely thought-provoking about a topic that all of us will face."
-Pauline Boss, Ph.D., author of Ambiguous Loss:
Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief
There is a special bond between a father and a daughter, and when that bond is broken by death, a woman's life can change in profound and unexpected ways. Clea Simon, critically acclaimed author of Mad House, explores this crucial meeting point of grief and growth by delving into her own experience and those of other women to paint an illuminating portrait of the father-daughter relationship and its lifelong ramifications. Filled with moving stories of real women, this poignant, comforting, and insightful book paves the way for all women to make peace with the past, with the adults they have become, and to courageously face the question: what happens next?
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-219) and index.
About the Author
CLEA SIMON writes a weekly column for the Boston Globe and is the author of Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings. A former public radio correspondent, she has appeared on MSNBC, Fox, and PBS, and regularly contributes to the New York Times and various magazines.
Table of Contents
Introduction.
After Daddy.
Reconciling Visions.
Fatherless Girls.
Time for Mourning.
Connecting with a Mate.
Marriages in Transition.
Babies and Mortgages.
Mothers and Daughters.
Work and Self-Image.
When Lives Do Not Change.
The Journey Over Time.
Postscript.
Acknowledgments.
Recommended Reading.
Bibliography.
Index.