Mary Gordon actually spends a fair amount of time detailing her research in the library and in contacting strangers. The reader gets to participate in the research process. This is like following Nancy Drew’s progress in solving a mystery–albeit without the imprisonment in the cistern, tarantula/black widow spider, etc.

The twist in Gordon’s book is that Mary Gordon was raised Catholic by her parents, although her father was born Jewish. But he had become a (IMO dangerous) anti-Semite and this made Gordon’s search for his past–and really the man himself as he had died while she was so young–a very complicated emotional ordeal.

Let me say that Mary Gordon’s book is gorgeously written. Maybe this heavy reliance on process wouldn’t work in the hands of a lesser writer, but it really works here. Will you enjoy the book? I’m not sure. It depends on the type of books you like. I think someone like me who is curious about family history, 20th century history, family relations, and beautiful, almost lyrical, writing will love it. ( )

19. The Shadow Man by Mary Gordon
published: 1996
format: 286 page hardcover
acquired: 2009 library book sale at Fondren Library of Rice University.
read: Apr 17-29
rating: 4

I was struggling to find a book after reading Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. I needed something readable, but the books I tried felt too light, and loose, even serious stuff. Then I opened this book, and started the introduction, actually titled "To The Reader". It was so intense, direct, serious. I had found my book.

Gordon had a special and inspirational relationship with her father, who was older and died of a heart attack when she was seven. But he had her taught to read, wrote her poetry and parental love letters, and their relationship would define who she was and tie into what made her into the author she became. "My father died when I was seven years old. I've always thought this was the most important thing anyone could know about me."

She knew he was born Jewish, and later converted to Catholicism and became very devout. It wasn't clear to me whether she realized he had become antisemitic, but she grew up later with insults from her family along the lines of something being "the Jew in her". And yet, "When I was ten, and he'd been dead only three years, I attempted his biography. It began, "My father is the greatest man I have ever known.""

She started writing this book when she was 44, my age now. And what she found was that her father was nothing like what he said he was, or what he appeared to be. Every discovery undermined something else about him. For example, he never worked during her childhood, even as he left the house everyday with a briefcase, and he hadn't gone Harvard, like he said. He hadn't even graduated high school. He was writer, but not a fine one. He published pornography and, during WII, antisemitic articles.

Unfortunately the book as a whole fails to maintain the fascination that the intensity of the early sections conjured up. Gordon is an emotional writer, and she struggles with her Jewish past, which she wants to get in touch with, and her Catholic present which she values deeply but doesn't exactly believe. And she struggles with the relationships with her family, her bitter memories and her mixed discoveries about them later. Yet, somehow the book loses some steam. It's, despite the 37 years or more since her father's death, a book of grief, of finding the man she learns she never really knew...and losing the one she thought she did know. And, I guess that the book just needed to evolve that way. I'm glad I read it, but not in a rush to recommend it on.

Side note: I discovered this book on the radio through Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, on the way to work in December of 2005 (link). It struck me, and I still remember his voice now. I was quite excited when I found a copy at a library book sale 3 plus years later, in 2009. Now I've finally read it, another 8 years later.

2017
https://www.librarything.com/topic/244568#6031408 ( )