Dear Fang, with love

Review by Booklist Review

Lucas has only recently been involved with his 17-year-old daughter, Vera, and the past year has been a doozy. Newly diagnosed with a severe mental illness after a psychotic break, Vera is now heavily medicated and deeply depressed. Hoping to snap her out of the funk, Lucas takes her on a guided tour of his ancestral town in Lithuania. There, while touring the town's Russian, Polish, and Jewish sites, he hopes to forge a stronger relationship with Vera while chasing down more information about his family's mysterious past. But while the truth seems elusive, being father and friend to a scared teenager proves harder than he imagined, and Vera has her own questions about his role in her life. Lucas' point of view is an honest account of parenting a teen with mental illness, while e-mails and messages give voice to Vera's perspective. Thorpe, the highly regarded author of The Girls from Corona del Mar (2014) sets this tale of parental guilt and teenage angst against the town's WWII past, adding true-life authenticity to an already stirring story.--Ophoff, Cortney Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Describing the Vilnius, Lithuania, where she's gone on a summer history tour with her father, 17-year-old Vera emails her boyfriend, Fang, back in California: "So there is a thing called baroque architecture, and the word baroque means 'imperfect pearl,' which I think should be made into a sexual euphemism for clitoris." The epistolary form is often an obstacle for writers, but these emails, interspersed throughout the book-otherwise narrated by Vera's father, Lucas-bring tremendous depth and texture to the narrative, and also showcase Thorpe's (The Girls from Corona del Mar) fabulous versatility, insight, and humor. Lucas and Vera are getting acquainted with the father-daughter relationship, as well as the country where they've arrived. Lucas didn't meet Vera until she was four, and spent only weekends with her several years after that. Their sudden close companionship comes in the wake of Vera's recent psychotic episode, after which she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which Lucas is struggling to accept and hoping to understand better over the course of the trip. Lucas, whose grandmother hailed from Lithuania, comes with a fair number of his own emotional complications, including his mythic and tangled ancestry. But while the themes of the book-mania, the Holocaust, and the devastating number of ways that any parent-child dynamic can go awry-are undeniably dark, Thorpe's prose is light, often hilarious, and unshakably grounded in the concrete details of daily life. The story wraps up a bit too tidily, but Thorpe has written an absolute winner. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Lucas and Katya have a daughter, Vera, who was conceived when they were both teenagers at boarding school. They are no longer a couple, and Lucas is a weekend dad who has just started to be involved in high schooler Vera's life. When Vera has a psychotic break while attending a party, Lucas takes her to Lithuania to discover his family history and give her an opportunity to heal. The book title refers to the emails that Vera writes to her boyfriend, Fang, at home. The story line wanders for much of the first half of the novel but then comes together in a satisfying resolution. Narrator Stephen Thorne is excellent, and the author does a solid job of covering the issue of mental illness and of one's family history. VERDICT For literary fiction collections. ["Lucas is an affable and kindhearted narrator whose perspective makes the dark subjects of the novel accessible": LJ 5/15/16 review of the Knopf hc.]-Michele Lauer-Bader, formerly with Half Hollow Hills Community Lib., Dix Hills, NY © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Lucas has been an absentee father for most of his daughter Vera's 17 years. After she has a psychotic break at a party and is diagnosed as bipolar, he decides it would be a good idea to take her to the city of Vilnius, his grandmother's homeland. He signs up for a tour to learn about his family history, with the intention of helping his daughter heal. It immediately becomes clear to Lucas that he has no idea how to be a father. Through emails to her boyfriend, Fang, and comments to her father, readers become privy to Vera's unraveling. The novel focuses as much on Lucas and his self-doubt as it does on Vera's undoing. There's a mystery involving Lucas's grandmother and her escape from the Nazis as well as information on Lithuanian history. Vera has another psychotic break on the trip, with heartbreaking results. Crisp and captivating, the writing powerfully portrays a host of well-drawn characters. VERDICT Thorpe has created a persuasive, compelling, and heartfelt portrait of a troubled yet loving family. A striking look at mental illness that will long stay with readers.-Jane Ritter, Mill Valley School District, CA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A father and daughter tour Lithuania in Thorpe's (The Girls from Corona del Mar, 2014) odd and deceptively simple family saga that spans countries and generations. As teenagers at Exeter, Lucas and Katya, drunk on love, impulsively decided to start a family ("Let's make a baby, baby"). The relationship collapsed soon after; Lucas and Katya spent most of their daughter's childhood semiestranged. Seventeen years later, the trioLucas, Katya, and now-teenage Verahave arrived at a sort of hesitant familial equilibrium. And then Vera has a psychotic episodeor at least, it seems that way. The doctor is certain of the bipolar diagnosis; Vera herself is sure she's fine. Lucas, now an English professor, isn't sure what to think, but when a flier for educational tours of Vilnius appears in his faculty mailbox"Experience History Firsthand"he's sure what to do. "It was an absurd idea," he admits, "whisking her off to a strange Eastern European vacation in the midst of a mental health crisis," and yet the idea of a father-daughter pilgrimage to his grandmother's homeland strikes him as restorative, even hopeful. In Vilnius, the two bond over an endless itinerary of walking tours; internally, though, they're both lost in their own worlds: Lucas is consumed by the mystery of his grandmother's escape from the camps, while Vera's attention is fixed on more recent historywhat happened between her parents? Anda question for both of themwhat is really happening inside Vera's mind? Switching between Lucas' endearing narration and Vera's ultrateenage letters home to her boyfriend, Fang, the novel weaves a strange and strangely intoxicating web of histories, both personal and geopolitical. Perhaps as a reflection of her mental instability, Vera flickers in and out of focus. The book belongs instead to Lucas; it is his personal history that gives the novel its emotional weight. Melancholic and whimsical at once, Thorpe's novel is bumpy, quirky, and wholly original. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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If you want to know what kind of girl my daughter, Vera, was, there is a story her mother, Katya, tells over and over. I wasn't there myself, but it is part of the family lore: little Vera, five years old, her dark hair in braids, attending another little girl's birthday. It was an overly elaborate party for a five-year- old girl, with candied violets on the cake, a gazebo, tasteful jewel-toned paper streamers, crowns made of real flowers for each little girl to wear, and a chalkboard listing a schedule of party games in cursive script. But it was a hot day. The children were beginning to melt. No one wanted to play the games, which seemed to be going on forever. Only the girl's mother, wild-eyed and possessed by the fever of party orchestration, was enthused, and she led them through endless rounds of red rover, musical statues, even an egg-and-spoon race. By the time a game ominously titled "Doggy, Doggy, Where's Your Bone?" was about to start, the birthday girl was crouched under a picnic table crying. Vera, ever the ambassador, ventured under there to pow- wow. The girl was hot and hungry. She could tell the other children weren't having fun. The party had been going on for three hours and cake and presents were not yet in sight. Why was her mother doing this? Couldn't they at least do one of the fun party games, like the piñata? Wasn't the birthday party supposed to be about her? But her mother didn't even care that she was crying there under the table. Her mother was going to make everyone play "Doggy, Doggy, Where's Your Bone?" no matter what. Vera patted the girl's skinny thigh. "Maybe your mom just doesn't understand how you feel," she said. And so Vera crawled out from under the picnic table, and went and found the girl's mother, tugging at the woman's dress as she was trying to explain the rules to the new game. "Excuse me," she said politely, "Samantha would like to open presents and eat cake now. She doesn't want to play games anymore." "Well, right now we are playing games," the girl's mother said, leaning down to Vera's eye level, her hands on her knees. "We have three more to go before it will be time for cake and presents." She pointed at the chalkboard that listed the party activities. "But maybe," Vera insisted, "you could just skip some. Maybe you could skip to the piñata?" "Samantha is welcome to join us if she decides she wants to be a big girl. Otherwise, she can stay under the table and cry." Vera stared at the woman for a moment, and then said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "If you wanted a birthday party so badly, you should have thrown one for yourself." Vera was always just like that. Almost brutally clear-sighted. Even as a child, she saw through people. Saw the reasons they did things. Saw the machinery behind the façade. As she became a teenager, her nose for hypocrisy became even keener and her thirst for justice more merciless. One of her high-school English teachers actually got teary-eyed during a parent-teacher conference out of worry that Vera didn't like her. "I feel like she can tell that I'm not actually equipped to challenge her," the poor woman said. "I mean, my degree isn't even in English, it's in education, and I feel like there is a real lack of depth to my analyses sometimes that Vera senses, and honestly, I don't blame her." If adults were unable to keep from seeking Vera's good opinion, her peers didn't have a chance. They worshipped her in a way that made her disdainful. The fall she was sixteen, she went to the homecoming dance in fleece footie pajamas printed with tropical fish and convinced her boyfriend, Fang, to do the same. They looked like giant, weird, Floridian babies. She also coerced him into memorizing a choreographed break-dance routine with her. I worried the whole thing was deeply misguided, but the dance number was a hit. Everyone thought wearing footie pajamas to homecoming was hilarious and cool. "You're a trendsetter," I said. "Ugh," she said. "Gross." Because she wasn't a trendsetter. No one could hope to be like her. She was one of a kind and, because of this, very much alone. About whether she was pleased with this state of affairs or saddened, I was never entirely sure. Maybe she would have liked to belong. Maybe her cruelty to the girls who would have done anything to be her friends was preemptive because she feared they would never accept her as she was. And maybe that's part of why she and Fang became the way they were. But all of this is only speculation. Excerpted from Dear Fang, with Love by Rufi Thorpe All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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