Father's Day: A Novel

by Simon Van Booy

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062408945
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/26/2016
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/22/2016
In Van Booy’s moving, redemptive new novel, a little girl grows into a talented and insightful young woman under the tutelage of her uncle, a disabled, unemployed ex-con with tremendous rage issues. The story unfolds in two timelines, the first of which begins when six-year-old Harvey becomes an orphan, and a rule-bending social worker convinces Harvey’s reluctant uncle Jason to take in a child he’s never met. The second story line, when Harvey is 26, revolves around Jason’s visit for Father’s Day in Paris, where Harvey lives and works. The novel fleshes out much of the intervening years, with a clean writing style that avoids any mawkishness. Harvey’s thoughts and feelings as a child, for instance, are age appropriate in content and expression; she never comes off as overly precocious. The third-person narrative gives both characters their own, distinctive voices that nonetheless change over time. Van Booy (The Illusion of Separateness) creates refreshing, humorous, yet poignant childhood milestones that the two reach with emotional honesty. As Jason raises Harvey, he grows as a person, his absolution coming from surprising places. Agent: Carrie Konia, Conville and Walsh Literary Agency (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Van Booy’s great triumph comes in using a family secret to underscore the message that family is as much a choice as a blood tie. Although any reader will find something to love here, someone who has benefited from a perfectly imperfect family will wear the widest smile. This little book with a big heart is suitable not just for Father’s Day, but for any day.

Shelf Awareness

There’s so much to enjoy along the way, from Mr. Van Booy’s muted lyricism to the profusion of quiet domestic moments rendered in the strangely captivating way of Andre Dubus.

Baylis Greene

[Van Booy’s] facility with word choice and sentence structure can leave a reader swooning...[a] movingly understated drama punctuated with moments of quiet reflection.

Barbara VanDenburgh

In this novel, Van Booy is at his most poignant, showing how redemption can arise from heartbreaking circumstances.

Boston Globe

11/15/2015
A six-year-old girl incongruously named Harvey has just lost her parents in a car accident, and her only living relative is a disabled felon named Jason. Surprisingly, social worker Wanda senses that declaring Jason the guardian of Harvey would be the making of them both. The multi-award-winning Van Booy has an excellent track record, with most recent novel, the best-selling The Illusion of Separateness, flat-out brilliant.

Library Journal

2016-02-04
A portrait of a unique family whose love overcomes odds. Van Booy (Tales of Accidental Genius, 2015, etc.) opens with sweet scenes of a young girl. The toddler, Harvey, observes the world with wonder as her parents help her make sense of it all. Harvey has dolls and toys from McDonald's and appears in most ways very well loved. There is a sense of foreboding about her growing older, however. By the chapter's end, her parents are stunned that she is starting first grade. From there, we jump forward. Twenty years later, Harvey is anxiously waiting for her father's arrival in Paris, where she now lives. She has prepared a Father's Day gift for him, a box filled with objects to symbolize "some vital moment of their lives." The final object will be the most important, freeing her father from a secret he's been keeping for 20 years. Alternating between past and present, the novel fills in the 20-year gap. Jason, the father who visits in Paris, is actually not Harvey's biological father but her uncle, who became her legal guardian after her parents died in a car accident. He's a recovering alcoholic with a criminal record and a prosthetic leg. They make for an odd pair at first; Jason abandons his tough-guy persona while young Harvey learns to play the drums from him and dreams of working at Jiffy Lube when she grows up. The tone often borders on the saccharine, and, though their relationship deepens, the characters don't. Despite this, there are moments of genuine emotion. Jason quits smoking for Harvey's sake, but when he won't share his nicotine gum, she's hurt. "That's so selfish," she says. "You never think about me." A sentimental story of the bond between father and child.

Kirkus Reviews

The moving account of a unique relationship between a parent and child, thrust together under the worst of circumstances. With fine, nuanced prose and much tenderness, Booy guides this unlikely father-daughter pair into a beautiful maturity, showing us with great heart what it really means to be a family.

Elizabeth Crane

In Father’s Day, Van Booy again deftly demonstrates that he is a master at the craft of storytelling.

Portland Press Herald

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