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    Father's Day: A Novel
    Father's Day: A Novel
    Father's Day: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Father's Day: A Novel

    Written by Simon Van Booy

    Narrated by Bronson Pinchot

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    When devastating news shatters the life of six-year-old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met—a disabled felon, haunted by a violent past he can't escape.

    Moving between past and present, Father’s Day weaves together the story of Harvey’s childhood on Long Island and her life as a young woman in Paris. Written in raw, spare prose that personifies the characters, this novel is the journey of two people searching for a future in the ruin of their past.

    Father's Day is a meditation on the quiet, sublime power of compassion, and the beauty of simple, everyday things—a breakthrough work from one of our most gifted chroniclers of the human heart.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9780062463555
    Author

    Simon Van Booy

    Simon Van Booy is the author of two novels and two collections of short stories, including The Secret Lives of People in Love and Love Begins in Winter, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. He is the editor of three philosophy books and has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and the BBC. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

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    Reviews for Father's Day

    4/5

    24 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Simply elegant and luminously crafted this story of the family that finds us amid life and takes us in at a time of great loss. This story will remind you that there is good in this world!
    • 5/5
      I LOVED this---but I want just a little more time for both Harvey...and her father....and for the reader. I want that question mark at the end to be filled in with a big heart!!! Touchingly told. Now I really want to read more by this author!
    • 4/5
      This is one of those books that grow on you. I read a little of it and put it down to read something else. I picked it up this morning and finished it. And, really enjoyed it. Six year Harvey loses her parents in an auto accident and luckily her case is being handled by a veteran social worker who knows how to make things work. Harvey is alone in the world except for a disabled uncle who has been in prison. She tells Wanda, her social worker, that she wants to live with him. The story goes back and forth in time between her childhood and as a 26 year old working and living in Paris. Her father, Jason, comes to Paris for Father's Day. This is a quiet book on what it takes to be a family, the small moments that add up to a good life. I can highly recommend this wonderful story.
    • 5/5
      Father's Day by Simon Van Booy is a very highly recommended story about a father and daughter that follows two timelines.The novel opens as Harvey, a little girl, is remembering scenes around her as a very young girl. Then we jump twenty years ahead into the future when Harvey at age 26 is living in Paris, and planning a special week of activities for her father, who is coming to visit her over Father's Day. Harvey has a box of gifts that symbolize some important moment in their lives together. The last gift she has will free her father from a secret he's been keeping for years.Harvey's parents were been killed in a car accident when she was six and she ends up living with her father's estranged older brother, Jason. Jason is a disabled ex-con and a recovering alcoholic who has anger management issues. He reluctantly becomes Harvey's father - and rises to the occasion. These chapters follow the building relationship between Jason and Harvey and notes important events in their lives together as Harvey grows up.The alternating present day chapters take place in Paris and follow the father and daughter as they enjoy each others company and Harvey plans special activities for them to enjoy. The affection Harvey feels for Jason is palatable; clearly he has been a great father for her. The alternating chapters telling their story as she grows up show what Jason has done and sacrificed to care for Harvey. She didn't fully comprehend some of the things he did until later, as an adult.Father's Day is a wonderful, emotionally honest, poignant novel about a unique family. And yes, I did shed some tears as I was reading. Jason is trying very hard to be a good father, but, it becomes clear that he perhaps learned how to be a good father from being a good big brother. The bond between Jason and Harvey is as strong as any father/daughter relationship. The two build a relationship and a future.The writing is incredible and perfectly captures the relationship between the two. I loved Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness and this adoration continues with Father's Day. Again, it feels like each word, each sentence has been very carefully planned. The language and sentences are seemingly simple, but express a world of emotion. (I like the idea that this story is reminiscent of a fable.) This is another thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent novel that you need to savor, as the depth of the relationship between the two slowly unfolds and builds.Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of a girl named Harvey. It begins when she is about two years old. It’s clear to the reader that Harvey is a very well-adjusted little girl with parents who love her. She has thoughts and questions about adult things expressed aptly through the eyes of a child. Her father has a brother she never met. Her mother paints a terrible picture of him. Her dad offers her a softer view of her uncle. Even still the uncle had been in prison — rage issues — and is off limits to Harvey.Her parents die in a car crash when she is only six-years-old. Wanda, a social worker, gives great thought to Harvey’s options. In fact, after doing some research, she tweaks the system in order to have Jason, Harvey’s uncle, adopt and raise her. Fast forward twenty years and Harvey is working in Paris and preparing for her father’s visit.Upon the initial death of Harvey’s parents, I found her to be almost too disconnected from the emotional trauma that would certainly play out with a six-year-old. The mystery, if there is one, was given away all too quickly … the fact that Harvey was raised by her Uncle Jason. It’s suggested that Harvey was young enough to accept that Jason was actually her father, yet I believe six-year-old children are old enough that they would remember their biological parents. The characters were rather clichéd or stereotyped, and the sentimentality was almost mawkish. There were many cute references with the flashbacks of a man raising a child for which he had no prior experience whatsoever. Rating: 3 out of 5.
    • 4/5
      Several years ago, I read Simon Van Booy's novel, The Illusion of Separateness. It was a profoundly moving novel of interconnected vignettes and I was anxious to see what Van Booy would do in a more traditional novel. He is still a beautiful writer but his newest novel, Father's Day, didn't quite have the same luminous feel that the previous one did. This novel is different in so many ways and while I loved the other one more, it was still a worthwhile reading experience.Harvey is just six years old when her parents die in a car accident. The only family she has left to her is her Uncle Jason, a man she's never met, a man her mother never acknowledged, a man who her father spoke of rarely although protectively. Jason is not the sort of man you'd think of to raise an orphaned child. He is an ex-con, sent to prison for fighting and blinding another man. He is disabled, having lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, and unemployed, surviving by selling things online. He's building a custom motorcycle in his garage whenever he can find the money to buy parts. And he struggles with the demons of his easily provoked rage often. There's not really any space in his life for a niece he's never met. Yet Wanda, the social worker assigned to Harvey's case, sees beneath the obvious disqualifications to the very heart of him and is determined to place Harvey in his care.The story alternates between the past and the present, starting with Harvey's life before the accident that left her orphaned and then flipping to present day Paris, where she has a wonderful creative job and is preparing for her father to come and visit her. She has discovered something she wants to confront him about. Her preparations and their visit together are interleaved with the story of her childhood and growing up years. There are also glimpses of the terrible childhood that Jason and her father lived as well. The reader watches as Jason learns to be a father, sees him determined to control his impulsive anger, to allow the caring portion of himself not destroyed by his own father's abuse to come to the fore in loving this child, and finally in cherishing her as a father does. The flipping back and forth in time serves the story but can be awkward in execution, making for an uneven narrative tension. Jason's character is uneducated but his language drifts in and out of sounding that way, making it a bit inconsistent in voice. And the ending is too tidy and predictable. But the plain and rooted caring between this reluctant father and the daughter he inherits is touching and lovely and those who enjoy simple, unadorned stories of created families will appreciate this emotionally loaded and heart warming tale of family, unconditional love, and belonging.