‘Letter to My Daughter’ Resonates
By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News (WV), March 5, 2010
Theoretically at least, I should be as unqualified to review a book about mother-daughter relationships as George Bishop was to write one, "Letter to My Daughter" (Ballantine Books, 160 pages, $20.00).
I have no daughter and neither does Bishop. I'm a guy and so is Bishop, so where does he get off writing about a mother and her daughter, who goes missing -- and what kind of nerve do I have reviewing it? As I write this, they've discovered the body of 17-year-old honor student and athlete Chelsea King in northern San Diego County, who went missing after a solo run. I can only imagine the grief her parents are going through.
Imagination is what fiction -- good fiction like George Bishop's debut novel -- is all about. Anybody can write about what they know firsthand; it takes imagination of a superior kind to put yourself into a different gender and push the imagination button.
Count Leo Tolstoy demonstrated a wonderful understanding of women in both "Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace." So did Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in plays like "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll's House" and French novelist Gustave Flaubert in "Madam Bovary." Similarly, Agatha Christie and other women writers created wonderful male characters. To pick just one contemporary writer, think about English novelist Ruth Rendell's fully realized Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford. Joyce Carol Oates' characters -- male and female alike -- are wonderfully drawn . . .
So, if you're a woman, or a man, looking for insights into parenting by a man who isn't a parent, pick up "Letter to My Daughter." You'll be charmed by Bishop's writing.
Review: ‘Letter to My Daughter’
By Carole Turner
The Bookreporter, March 9, 2010
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this debut novel is the fact that the author is a man who never married or became a parent. That he could have such a clear understanding of the sometimes difficult mother-daughter relationship is quite unique.
Author Explores Relationship Between Mother and Daughter
The Lafayette Advertiser (LA)
February 14, 2010
Bishop's debut novel will tear at your heartstrings, giving an amazing insight into the difficult lessons and tribulations of adolescence, particularly among women.
Profound, Thoughtful Works Stir Emotions
By Dave Wood
River Falls Journal (WI), March 5, 2010
When Samuel Richardson wrote one of the English language’s first epistolary novels, entitled “Pamela,” he probably never dreamed that North Carolinian George Bishop would write such a novel about four centuries later. “Letter to My Daughter” (Ballantine Books, $20) takes that epistolary form into the 21st century . . .
Come to think of it, “Letter to My Daughter” is really different than Richardson’s “Pamela,” which counsels virginity so as to drive a suitor to the altar. Bishop’s lessons are much more coherent.
News and Reviews
‘Letter to My Daughter' a Gripping Debut Novel
By Ben Steelman
Wilmington Star News (NC), February 20, 2010
“Letter to My Daughter” is a short but gripping novel. Bishop – who earned his MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington – manages to dodge the nostalgia of the middle-aged and get back to how painful high school really was, in the '60s or any other time: The first time your heart is broken. The first time you're really humiliated. The first time you betray someone you love.
What's amazing is that Bishop – a sometime actor turned globetrotting teacher – is a lifelong, childless bachelor. Still, he somehow gets into a teenage girl's head and roams around in there like a native. You believe in Laura; her voice never hits a false note.