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"  You know that moment when the ingenue in the horror movie heads downstairs to check the radiator, and you&amp;#039;re screaming, dumbfounded, at the screen? That&amp;#039;s the sort of protective rage you feel for Daley Amory, the narrator of Lily King&amp;#039;s novel Father of the Rain (Atlantic Monthly Press), when she blows off a prestigious job in academia to return, at 29, to her hometown to help save her brutish, alcoholic cad of a dad from destroying himself. Even as you curse her na\u00EFvet\u00E9, you know it couldn&amp;#039;t have happened any other way. At the start of King&amp;#039;s haunting, incisive story, which spans three decades, Daley is 11 and her mother is about to leave her father, a Waspy cutup full of country-club charm and devoid of compassion. He immediately remarries the mother of one of Daley&amp;#039;s classmates. &amp;quot;Somehow he has \u00ADhidden vast swaths of his personality from people who do not live with him,&amp;quot; Daley realizes. On a family vacation with her father and new step-family, Daley glimpses the cruelty she&amp;#039;s about to endure for years and years\u2014and yet: &amp;quot;Even if it&amp;#039;s at my own expense, I like making my father laugh. He has a lot of pretend and halfhearted laughs, but his real one makes a clicking sound in the back of his throat that I love to hear.&amp;quot; She will continue to chase that laugh like a drug addict seeks to equal the first high; she&amp;#039;ll never stop trying, but it will never feel the same, and the cost to her well-being will only continue to grow. King is brilliant when writing from the eyes of a tween, all self-conscious curiosity but bright and hopeful as a starry sky. And as Daley grows up and learns how to trust and to love in spite of herself, King cuts a fine, fluid line to the melancholy truth: Even when we&amp;#039;re grown and on our own\u2014 wives, mothers, CEOs\u2014we still long to be someone&amp;#039;s daughter. The dream of an absent ideal \u00ADfather is like a thick, soft blanket; find one to \u00ADburrow under, and enjoy. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a11267/book-release-father-of-the-rain-451375/>