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Mayan Atassi--once Mayan Stevenson--returns in an immensely powerful novel about love and lovelessness, fathers and fatherlessness, and the loyalties that shape us even when they threaten to destroy us. Now a woman of twenty-eight and finally on her own in medical school, Mayan becomes obsessed with the father she never knew, leading her to hire detectives to dredge up the past, thus eroding her savings, ruining her career, and flirting with madness in a search spanning two continents.Tags
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Member Reviews
This novel takes place five years after the events in Anywhere But Here. Mayan, the daughter in the earlier novel,(yes her name was changed) is now a medical student in her late twenties living an unexciting, life in New York City.Mayan becomes obsessed with the search for her father, who abandoned the family. She spends all her savings on the services of a sleazy detective who never gets her close to her goal; she lets her studies, her friendships, and even her health fall by the way-side seemingly without realizing it. Simpson offers a wrenching and provocative portrait of a truly dysfunctional family, her writing is straightforward and often beautifully poetic.
I found myself caught up in Mayan's whirlpool of unresolved feelings for show more both parents. She knows she has "issues" but cannot manage get past them. As she is only 28 at the time of this writing, it is not difficult to understand her depression, anger and feeling of loss and abandonment.
I highly recommend The Lost Father . show less
I found myself caught up in Mayan's whirlpool of unresolved feelings for show more both parents. She knows she has "issues" but cannot manage get past them. As she is only 28 at the time of this writing, it is not difficult to understand her depression, anger and feeling of loss and abandonment.
I highly recommend The Lost Father . show less
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ThingScore 100
"...it's a superb book. Whatever the reader's hesitations, a wave of wanting to know does start building; it does become urgent that we see if Mayan ever finds her father and, if so, what happens next. And the portrait of Mayan that emerges is marvelous in its acuity and richness. "The thing I still love best about us, my mother and me," she says, "is that we wanted so." Ms. Simpson evokes show more precisely the gritty and visceral intensity of that need." show less
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Author Information
11+ Works 2,228 Members
Mona Simpson lives in Santa Monica and New York City. (Publisher Provided) Mona Simpson was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin on June 14, 1957. She received a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. Her first book, Anywhere but Here, was published in 1987 and was adapted into a movie in 1999. show more Her other works include The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, and My Hollywood. She won the Heartland Prize of the Chicago Tribune for Off Keck Road. She has also received a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1992
- People/Characters
- Ann August (as Mayan Atassi)
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 276
- Popularity
- 116,288
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.34)
- Languages
- English, French, German, Norwegian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 5
