If the title Father Melancholy's Daughter
makes you suspect this is a downbeat book that depressives should
avoid, you're guessing wrong.
Yes, Father Melancholy — the Rev. Walter Gower —
frequently
goes behind what he calls his "Black Curtain." But Father Gower, an
Episcopal priest in a small town in Virginia, is a pleasure to spend
time with — kind, intellectual, and sincerely religious. His
depression takes the form of low self-esteem, and he continues his
clerical duties through depressive episodes, even considering them a
message from God. He and his daughter Margaret, the narrator, are
living with a wound that might make anyone depressed. Their wife and
mother, Ruth, left on a vacation with a friend when Margaret was 6 and
never returned; less than a year later, Ruth was killed in an auto
accident.
Despite the title, depression isn't really the nub of the book.
Margaret, not Father Melancholy, has the lead role. She is mature
beyond her years, smart, with an acute perceptiveness. Probably because
of the circumstances of her upbringing, she has a
counselor's skill of asking the right question to draw someone out.
Margaret grew up deprived of a mother, but the relationship with her
father is one that many people can only dream of having with a parent.
Their love, commitment, and mutual regard are palpable. Although some
readers might feel that their bond holds Margaret back, her example
argues that you don't always have to make a break with home in order to
grow up. Anchoring the father-daughter devotion is devotion to their
faith. The book is sprinkled with Christian theology, but in a seeking
rather than a preaching way, so it shouldn't be a turnoff to
nonbelievers.
At the end Margaret makes a decision that is the finest tribute she
could pay to her father. In the later Evensong (2000),
Godwin continued Margaret's story.
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