01/16/2023
“I am haunted by my father,” writes Gilman (The Anti-Romantic Child ), daughter of literary power couple Richard Gilman and Lynn Nesbit, in this poignant memoir. As a Yale drama professor and critic at such publications as the Nation and Newsweek , the author’s father “was the judge and they the judged,” Gilman writes—they being the literati who swilled cocktails and debated books and politics in the Central Park West apartment he shared with Nesbit, a prominent literary agent. In 1980, Gilman’s parents divorced, and for several years, her father struggled with depression and moved from one seedy apartment to another. Meanwhile, Nesbit disclosed to the preteen Gilman her father’s erotic predilections and infidelities. As a result, Gilman writes, “she both turned me against my father and turned me toward him.” Like her mother before her, Gilman began to feel “responsible for his stability.” After his death and years into therapy, Gilman considers whether her father’s adultery—described in his own memoir as prolific, and having included affairs with his students—was a result of her mother marrying him lovelessly, rebounding from “one of her first clients and her first great love,” the writer Donald Barthelme. Bibliophiles will enjoy the literary cameos (Joan Didion, Toni Morrison) and reflections on literature, but Gilman’s wrenching recollections of marital, and familial, dissolution are near-universal. This is an eye-opening testament to the lasting wounds of divorce. (Feb.)
"The Critic's Daughter is an exquisite love song, a riveting story, a book for our time. Any daughter with a father, anyone who has been part of a family, anyone who has struggled with loving, anyone interested in literary criticism, or the theater, or life, this is a book for you."
"One of the reasons I loved Gilman’s book is that through her father she makes a case for criticism as a worthwhile practice... The Critic’s Daughter is a book about a lot of things, but one of them is this: that a fierce and powerful voice, a voice that some people were afraid to hear, can disguise an awful lot of trouble and pain. The critic’s daughter—the writer, as opposed to the book—has the tenderness, the acuity, and the facility to explore her father and her relationship to him in ways that cannot help but resonate. Maybe this is because all of us are the children of critics, in one way or another."
The Believer - Nick Hornby
"The Critic’s Daughter hits home not just as an insider’s chronicle of a notable literary family, but as a depiction of the pain a broken marriage inflicts... Gilman’s memoir is testament to an upbringing infused with a love of language and literature."
Lilith - Alice Sparberg Alexiou
"Captivating and heartfelt... Gilman’s reflections on her father’s work, as well as her own struggles with identity, are both heartbreaking and inspiring... The Critic’s Daughter is an honest and moving exploration of family, identity, and the human experience. It is a must-read for anyone looking for an intimate and honest look into the life of a literary family."
"Intimate, thoughtful... For me, this memoir read as a rare confluence of things—not so much a 'Daddy Dearest' settling of scores, but a sincere attempt to untangle a father-daughter knot of love, hurt, and grief... [S]earing."
"A brilliant, gorgeous, miracle of a book."
★ 2022-10-29
"I lost my father for the first time when I was ten years old," writes Gilman, author of a previous memoir, The Anti-Romantic Child , referring to her parents' divorce. Their separation ended an idyllic early childhood among the New York literati of the 1970s, lit by her father's devotion to his two daughters and his love of make-believe, storytelling, and children's literature. His impersonation of Sesame Street 's Grover was a beloved lifelong party trick, one of many endearing rituals of his "religion of childhood." "As his daughter, I have the privilege—or the burden—of making the final assessment of my father's life," Gilman writes, and then wonders, "Can I make an act of bracing honesty also an act of love?" She certainly has done so here. For those who don't know her father's work—as a critic and professor at Yale Drama School, he was a supporter of iconoclastic theater and the author of a landmark book on Chekhov—Gilman provides a detailed portrait of his career, including many quotes from his writing, which famously combined the personal and the academic in densely nested clauses. After her mother "bitterly divorced him and remained hardened against him," he went through a long period of personal and financial trials, through which the author and her sister bravely tried to buoy him, until his third wife, a wonderful Japanese woman, appeared to save the day. The cruelty of Gilman's still-very-much-alive mother during these decades is disturbingly evident, which makes the inclusion in the final pages of an exchange about the marriage that occurred during the writing of the memoir "a balm like no other.” The narrative is passionate, resonant, and beautifully written, with just a few forgivably maudlin moments.
Evokes both a uniquely brilliant and troubled man and the poignantly relatable essence of the father-daughter connection.
"Gilman writes with resplendent clarity, meticulous candor, and incandescent love forged in the fire of extraordinarily demanding family dynamics.… Gilman incisively charts her remarkable father’s intense ups-and-downs and lucidly analyzes her own struggles in a richly involving chronicle gracefully laced with literary allusions, compassion, and wisdom."
Booklist (starred review)
"With bracing honesty, The Critic’s Daughter , Priscilla Gilman’s perspicacious memoir, unmasks the privilege and the burden of her beloved father’s life and his literary legacy.… The Critic’s Daughter spotlights an era of formidable criticism accomplished with conscious clarity. It’s a reminder that criticism is a necessary art form. But the book is even more than that.… Gilman’s skills as a memoirist, playwright, poet, critic, dramaturge, and family historian set a high bar."
"In capturing the essence of its challenging subject, The Critic’s Daughter is a rare combination of honesty, warmheartedness and exquisite writing.… Richard Gilman would be proud of the eloquence and grace with which [Priscilla Gilman] has done it."
BookReporter - Harvey Freedenberg
"A penetrating, plangent memoir, electric with emotional urgency and alive with self-awareness… Gilman has the gumption to look at her father, her mother and herself with clarity and without apology. She wonders if she can make radical honesty 'an act of love.' Her efforts are brave, and bracing."
Wall Street Journal - Nneka McGuire
"Priscilla Gilman tells a fascinating story about her dynamic parents and the literary world that they inhabited.… While The Critic’s Daughter concerns itself with her parents’ marriage and its aftermath, it’s very much a book about the way one develops and nurtures a fascination with the arts through enthusiasm, criticism, and commerce."
Literary Hub - Lauren LeBlanc
"The Critic’s Daughter is an exquisite and rare example of how the memoir needs as much inventiveness in scope and form as our most lush fiction and poetry. Priscilla Gilman writes sentences I never see coming, and those sentences splinter into a textured model of how to write about—and through—art, perpetual discovery, and parenting. I’ve read few books in my life as skillfully executed and willfully conceived as The Critic’s Daughter . This should not work. But my goodness, it just does."
"The heart of this memoir is the unusually powerful, fraught, and enduring father-daughter relationship. Gilman creates an emotional map of the catastrophic disruption of divorce and the devotion of a child for her parent despite his failings."
New York Journal of Books - Jane Constantineau
"The Critic’s Daughter is about the complex love between a parent and a child.… The memoir genre…pumps out innumerable rote tales of becoming, of breaking free, of learning to 'direct' one’s own life. It offers few stories of being and remaining entangled.… The Critic’s Daughter is an account of a love that’s neither takeoff strip nor landing pad, a child’s confounding adoration for her parent that’s neither really resolved nor extinguished."
Washington Post - Eve Fairbanks
"The Critic’s Daughter is first and foremost a very touching love story about a father, a daughter, and their unbreakable bond. Priscilla Gilman writes with eloquence and absolute candor of her late father Richard Gilman, the esteemed, brilliant, but deeply troubled drama and literary critic.… An unforgettable read, The Critic’s Daughter is as entertaining as it is moving."
"This revealing and clearly heartfelt memoir—a love letter to her father that doesn’t obscure the difficult and frustrating aspects of their relationship—works precisely because Gilman delivers a detailed portrait of her father, proverbial warts and all.… She certainly provides the rest of us with a daughter’s thoughtful and empathetic profile of her dad."
Boston Globe - Daneet Steffens
"The daughter of an unsparing critic, Priscilla Gilman has written a book her father would have deeply admired: a tender, unflinching memoir that is also a searching reflection on the relationship between criticism and love. The father she lost is vividly captured in this moving, gracefully written, bracingly honest book."
"The Critic’s Daughter holds so many joys in store for you: The joy of disappearing into a finely crafted world—in this case, of Gilman’s mind, heart, and personal history. The joy of encountering a text sprinkled with insights, like so many pearls. But most of all, the joy of basking in Priscilla Gilman’s capacious love—for her father, for her family, and for you, her reader."
"Loss, grief, criticism, and love mix and mingle in this moving, literary memoir, one of the best father/daughter memoirs around."
"The Critic's Daughter is an exquisite love song, a riveting story, a book for our time. Any daughter with a father, anyone who has been part of a family, anyone who has struggled with loving, anyone interested in literary criticism, or the theater, or life, this is a book for you."
Unmasks the privilege and the burden of her beloved father’s life and his literary legacy.”
One of the best father/daughter memoirs around.”
Priscilla Gilman begins narrating her memoir by expressing concern about her ability to fully capture the complexity of her father and their relationship…Her wary tone doesn’t continue long…Gilman surpasses the expectations she sets at the audiobook’s opening. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
Priscilla Gilman begins narrating her memoir by expressing concern about her ability to fully capture the complexity of her father and their relationship. Her wary tone doesn't continue long. Soon she, and listeners, are engaged in stories about her life with her famous dad, writer, theater critic, and Yale School of Drama professor Richard Gilman. The author delivers period-defining details and people, quotes from her father and his critics, examples of her father's nurturing of her imagination, and her deep sorrow over her parents' acrimonious divorce. Gilman's narration brings clarity and candor to complicated family dynamics and to the development of Priscilla's defining role as cheer-bringer and peace-provider, a persona she created to hide her grief. Gilman surpasses the expectations she sets at the audiobook's opening. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Priscilla Gilman begins narrating her memoir by expressing concern about her ability to fully capture the complexity of her father and their relationship. Her wary tone doesn't continue long. Soon she, and listeners, are engaged in stories about her life with her famous dad, writer, theater critic, and Yale School of Drama professor Richard Gilman. The author delivers period-defining details and people, quotes from her father and his critics, examples of her father's nurturing of her imagination, and her deep sorrow over her parents' acrimonious divorce. Gilman's narration brings clarity and candor to complicated family dynamics and to the development of Priscilla's defining role as cheer-bringer and peace-provider, a persona she created to hide her grief. Gilman surpasses the expectations she sets at the audiobook's opening. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
