fathers and daughters

I have finished Bergen's The Time in Between, and pledge not to ruin it for fellow book club members.

However, I am struck by how the writer manages to centre the story around a conflict between a father and daughter who narrate from different points in time. Whether they meet in the book is irrelevant; what binds and tears them is their understanding of each other. Or lack of understanding.

Early on, Bergen writes of the way Charles Boatman's eldest daughter, Ada, follows and listens carefully to him, whether as a child, teenager, or adult, long after her siblings have lost interest. She is always trying to collect the threads of who he might be in the hopes of tracking the strands to the truth.

Her younger brother calls this a heavy weight only she bears.

I wonder if this is the curious way of daughters everywhere.



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