My Father Dancing

Allegra Goodman

Two stories in the collection have a staged quality....However, Broyard's best stories read true. The title story is rich with memory and feeling.
— The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The daughter of the late author and critic Anatole Broyard has written a collection that is partly about fathers and daughters, partly about the many difficult choices facing young women trying to find their place in life--and it has to be said that the former stories are more successful than the latter. The title story, particularly, is surely a barely fictionalized reminiscence of a man who wrote clear-sightedly of his own approaching death, and strikes a number of eloquently touching notes. "The Trouble with Mr. Leopold" tells of the conflicting demands made on an impressionable schoolgirl by a teacher and a father who are both manipulative in their different ways. "At the Bottom of the Lake" is about a girl desperately trying to preserve a cherished but irretrievable relationship in the face of an impossible stepmother. Several of the other stories, however, especially "Ugliest Faces," "Loose Talk" and "Snowed In," are sensitively observed but not very revealing accounts of women trying on roles for men friends and lovers, and the touch here is less sure; Broyard has some difficulty in ending her tales on an appropriately conclusive note, and too often they seem to stop in midair. Still, she has an assured style that usually carries her over the rougher spots, and is pleasantly free of the tough, show-off quality common to many younger short story writers. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

The young women in this collection of eight short stories are from the New England prep school scene. Some are still teenagers, some in college, and some are college graduates. They've had easy, privileged lives: they live in houses filled with books, Persian rugs and grand pianos. These are the girls who might have been in Carol Gilligan's famous study of adolescent females; some have found a voice, some haven't. The most painful story involves Bridget, an undergraduate who is having an intense affair with her former instructor, a graduate student. Bridget hits and injures a male student with her car and is blackmailed into having sex with him in his dorm room. Several of the stories, including the title story, are about fathers. (The author's father was a well-known literary critic.) The young women describe interactions with their fathers with bemusement and partial understanding. Their relationships with men and boys their own age reflect ambivalence and uncertainty. English teachers might have an interesting discussion about "Snowed In," in which a group of teenagers of both sexes are holed up in a country house with no parents in evidence. Young women will find this collection intriguing. The book made the New York Times Notable Book of the Year list. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Harcourt, 189p, 21cm, 00-035066, $13.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Penelope Power; Libn., Garrison Forest Sch., Garrison, MD January 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 1)

Library Journal

In this debut, the daughter of renowned New York Times reviewer Anatole Broyard turns out eight stories, several of which appeared in Best American Short Stories 1998 and The Pushcart Anthology.

Allegra Goodman

Two stories in the collection have a staged quality....However, Broyard's best stories read true. The title story is rich with memory and feeling.
— The New York Times Book Review

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

...[A] wonderful first collection....[Her dialogue] tends to be a little stiff and monochromatic....But it is between the lines that Ms. Broyard's writing is most effective....[She] proves herself a powerful writer...
— The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

The daughter of the late critic and longtime New York Times reviewer Anatole Broyard debuts with eight stories that break little new ground but are readable, well-crafted, entirely unaffected—and consequently of considerable appeal. In the title story, a young woman named Kate, as her father is dying from cancer, remembers his love of dancing—something he did wonderfully—all the way back to her own very early childhood, when she stood on his feet as he moved her around the living-room rug. In "Mr. Sweetly Indecent," an equally touching father story though more loosely told, a young woman sees her father kissing another woman—and is seen by him as she looks. Lucy Baldwin, engaged to be married, invites her father for a visit to the lake cabin that she keeps up partly because he once loved it dearly—as he still does, though his second wife ("At the Bottom of the Lake") is a citified snob and shrew who dislikes it and ruins the visit for everyone—though resulting in one of the best stories in the volume. A girl named Pilar lives with Max but is infatuated with a famous musician who calls her from the road for love-whispering ("Loose Talk"); a schoolgirl named Celia, in the funniest piece, has a father who's a professional writer—though when he helps her with a paper, it gets only a C-plus ("The Trouble with Mr. Leopold"); and "Ugliest Faces," if at moments far-fetched, shows post-college love, sex, and guilt being tested. Two closing tales are set in Connecticut, where an Eloise-like girl named Lily has a famous father ("A Day in the Country") and then, years later, has an epiphany about her own sexuality that's quite remarkable indeed ("Snowed In").Stories from an author showing a steady hand and eye, a large heart, and an admirable aversion to trend, fad, or pose of any sort. All eyes should be open, looking for more.