Starred review from March 11, 2019
In this luminous debut memoir, Smyth, an editor at the Paris Review, recounts her father’s life and death, while referring to Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse as a counterpoint to her own experiences of love and family attachment. An only child born to two Boston architects, Smyth idolized her father, a self-proclaimed nihilist who is beguiling, affectionate, and self-destructive, “the cynosure of all eyes.” Diagnosed with kidney cancer at 46 when the author was 11, Geoffrey Smyth continued to smoke and drink; throughout the next 14 years his family endured his battles with bladder and lung cancers until his death. Smyth moves effortlessly through the narrative, whether detailing her father’s illness or reveling in powerful memories (making a dollhouse together; her father swimming amid jellyfish off the coast of Rhode Island). Examining her parents’ marriage, Smyth turns to Woolf’s reflections on the institution, specifically in the relationship between Woolf and her husband, Leonard: “Marriage to Leonard may at times have felt like servitude, but it could also be an overwhelming source of joy.” This is a moving and fascinating portrait of a father and his daughter’s unyielding devotion.