What to read for Father’s Day? At this time of year, our thoughts naturally turn to some of the most poignant and affecting books we’ve read through the years about fathers and daughters. What about fathers and sons, you say? That’s a different matter, and a topic for another post. For now, we’ve scanned our bookshelves and our memories and come up with a list of the best novels that illuminate the impact and legacy of relationships between fathers and daughters.
what to read for Father’s Day this year
If you yourself are a father, or a daughter, you know what we mean. The relationships between fathers and daughters can be simultaneously empowering and fraught – complicated, exuberant, distant, loving, painful.
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Small wonder that so many brilliant novels and memoirs penned by women have been narratives about being a daughter with a difficult father. Or a departed father.
What are the best books about fathers and daughters?
The weight of expectations, the longing for protection and guidance, the secrets, the care-giving, the struggle for independence – anger, devotion, disappointment, adoration and joy are all entangled in a way that only the best writers can illuminate.
What are the best books about fathers and daughters?
the best books about fathers and daughters
Here are our picks of 15 of the best books about the impact and legacy of relationships between fathers and daughters. Some are serious, others are sweet and a bit silly – but all provide moments of recognition, grace and insight for anyone who is a father or a daughter. Or for anyone who would like to understand what this most elemental of ties is really all about.
What to read on Father’s Day: the best books and novels about fathers and daughters. Courtesy Photos.
1.
Small Fry: A Memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Steve Jobs’ daughter shares a piercing portrait of a father-daughter relationship in this widely-acclaimed memoir. In his daughter’s earliest years, Jobs was a mythical figure who was rarely present. As she grew older, though, he took an interest in her. She recounts that while his attention was thrilling, he could also be cold, critical and unpredictable. Like many daughters, she held out hope for years that Jobs would become the father she’d always wanted him to be. That he never did should not come as a surprise, yet somehow reading this account, we feel the pain as if it does.
2.
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong. In this marvelously-written novel, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents’ home in Silicon Valley in the throes of grieving over a broken engagement. There, she finds a startling and challenging situation. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth soon realizes that she’s losing him, just as she lost her fiancé. The relationships in this family are tender, witty and heartbreaking – and they’ll stay with you long after this story comes to an end.
3.
Made for Love by Alissa Nutting. The premise of this novel is truly nutty (no pun on the author’s last name intended): in 2019, a 30-something woman flees the home she shares with her manipulative tech mogul billionaire husband, and lands in her elderly father’s trailer park in Florida. On the same day that his life-size blow-up sex doll arrives in the mail.
There’s also a subplot involving dolphins that is basically unprintable on a refined blog such as this one. Trust us: not only is this book smart, sharp and funny. It’s also a moving reflection on what we lose when technology advances past all imagining; on the nuances of love and disappointment between fathers and daughters; and on human desires that even AI cannot overcome.
What to read on Father’s Day: the best books and novels about fathers and daughters. Courtesy Photos.
4.
My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent. Fourteen-year old Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her childhood has been spent roaming the woods along the northern California coast. Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes and looks at her “as if she is the sunrise.” Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption.
5.
All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg. Sometimes when a person dies, it serves as a moment of rebirth for many of the people around them. And so it is in this wintry and brilliantly-written novel, which happens to take place in a steamy hot summer in New Orleans.
The patriarch of a family lies dying in a hospital room. Swirling around him and criss-crossing the city are his soon-to-be-widow, his daughter and his daughter-in-law. His only son refuses to make the journey to keep watch. Through their eyes, we gradually begin to see the impact that a very bad man can have on his family for multiple generations. And how that family might begin to recover and rebuild once the weight of his cruelty is finally lifted.
Like the deep winter, this is a story of loss and sorrow. But even in the coldest depths, there’s warmth – and glimmers of hope.
6.
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry is one of the most beautifully written, atmospheric and intelligent novels we’ve read in a long while. No surprise, as it was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review. In a desolate transit terminal on the coast of Spain, two middle-aged Irish gangsters anxiously await a passenger who may be arriving by boat from Northern Africa. Or perhaps she’s departing.
“She’s a small girl. She’s a pretty girl. Dilly Hearne is the girl’s name.” They repeat the refrain, plaintively, threateningly, sorrowfully, hopefully. She’s the daughter of one of these men. As they wait and wait, the two men recite and relive the consequences of their many sins. They’re broken in body and spirit. And yet, there’s still hope and fire in them. The prose is diamond-sharp and the atmosphere is tangibly misty and fogged with regret. This is a stunning read.
What to read on Father’s Day: the best books and novels about fathers and daughters. Courtesy Photos.
7.
Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi is a tale of immigration, family and the irresistible lure of home. In this debut novel, renowned surgeon Kweku Sai and his family have moved from Africa to Baltimore to accommodate his job. When he suddenly decamps for Ghana, leaving the family stranded in America, it falls to his wife Fola to raise their four children and help them come to terms with this profound abandonment. As Sai lays dying, the story moves between Accra, Lagos, London, Baltimore and New York as we learn what becomes of each of his children as a result of his unexplained departure. The lush prose and deeply-felt characterizations make for a truly lovely read about resilience, forgiveness and redemption.
8.
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. In this novel, a hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Fourteen-year old Esch’s father is growing concerned about the weather. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn’t show concern for much else. Esch and her three siblings have to face down natural and man-made disasters without much help. And yet this indomitable family of motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce, somehow pulls it together to face another day.
9.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. These two novels – one a fiercely beloved icon of American literature starring a father and daughter, and the other a posthumously-published “sequel” that rips the sentiment away to show a much darker portrait. Which one is “right”? That’s your call. Read the first one to feel inspired and moved. Read the second if you want to mine a vein of paternal behavior and race relations in America that will not leave you with a warm glow – but that might be far closer to the truth.
What to read on Father’s Day: the best books and novels about fathers and daughters. Courtesy Photos.
10.
The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings. Matthew King was once considered one of the most fortunate men in Hawaii, a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners. But his luck has changed. His two daughters are out of control; his thrill-seeking wife lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident; and he learns that her lover is one of the few people who doesn’t know of her condition. Forced to examine what he owes not only to the living but to the dead, Matt takes to the road with his daughters to find the man with whom his wife seems to be in love – and to start the journey toward the next chapter in the family’s life. The film – starring George Clooney and Shailene Woodley – was brilliant. You’ll love the book, too.
11.
Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard. The Norwegian writer shares a collection of brief meditations that attempt to capture what makes the world beautiful, all written for his unborn daughter, his fourth child. “Now, as I write this, you know nothing about anything, about what awaits you, the kind of world you will be born into. And I know nothing about you… You will come to see it in your own way, you will experience things for yourself and live a life of your own, so of course it is primarily for my own sake that I am doing this: showing you the world, little one, makes my life worth living.”
12.
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti is a novel about the lengths we’d go to in order to protect our family. The book follows Loo and her father, the titular Samuel Hawley, as they settle into a provincial New England town. Not all is as it seems, however. Though Hawley is quiet, he has a dark past as a smuggler, and his decision to move is an attempt to escape ghosts of his former life of crime that are coming to haunt him. The novel tracks Samuel Hawley’s past (the 12 lives alluded to in the novel) alongside Hawley’s efforts to give Loo a normal childhood. He bears twelve scars from bullet wounds, each with their own story. Now his daughter, Loo, is asking questions about her mother’s mysterious death. As Samuel’s criminal past begins to spill into their present, the two must face a reckoning together.
What to read on Father’s Day: novels about fathers and daughters. Courtesy Photos.
13.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. This beloved novel, penned in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and Meg’s classmate Calvin O’Keefe. They are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government. At the core of their quest is Meg’s steadfast love and devotion to her father, who is willing to risk everything to protect his children. Even when he’s not at home, the mere memory of her father gives Meg the courage she needs in a bewildering and fast-changing world.
14.
Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. This novel is un-classifiable by most traditional measures. It’s about an orphaned young woman who was absolutely devoted to her father. And about a family of refugees. The power of literature. And the incredible difficulties of romantic love. There’s a parrot, a trip to Barcelona, and a group of improbable roommates. Oh, and a corpse in a suitcase. Despite the crazy, this particular hero’s journey is funny, smart, sexy and memorable. In other words, its a really great read.
15.
Creatures by Crissy van Meter. The milieu for this wonderful novel is the fictional Winter Island, off the coast of Southern California. Life there is governed by the weather, the tides, and the rhythms of sea creatures, animals and plants. We first meet 20-something Evie on the eve of her wedding, when her estranged mother turns up uninvited.
From there we move backward and forward in time, learning the story of the intense bond between Evie and her ramshackle father, who for a brief time made real money selling Winter Wonderland, a famous stain of weed grown only on the island. He’s loving, and also a mess – alcoholic, volatile and undependable. The sections of the story that illuminate this father-daughter relationship are among the strongest we’ve read anywhere. But this tale is full of satisfying surprises – brilliantly and quietly done, this is one of the best new books we’ve read so far this year.
What to read on Father’s Day: novels about fathers and daughters. Courtesy Photos.
the best books about fathers and daughters
What to read on Father’s Day this year? Well, dear reader, those are our top picks for books about the relationships between fathers and daughters. What’s your favorite? And what did we miss? Happy Father’s Day, all.
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For access to insider ideas and information on the world of luxury, sign up for our Dandelion Chandelier Newsletter here. And see luxury in a new light.
Join our community
For access to insider ideas and information on the world of luxury, sign up for our Dandelion Chandelier newsletter. And see luxury in a new light.