"Love Dad" by Evan Hunter - My favourite book

A good few years ago, I first read "Love Dad" by Evan Hunter.  Since then I have considered it to be my all time favourite book.

Based around the relationship between a daughter and father through the 1960's it brilliantly describes how complex this relationship is.  It follows through their life and shows her gaining independence from her loving family and going through tumultous scenes to finally land where her father probably wanted her to be from the day she was born.

The above is what I consider the book to be about.  However a reviewer on the Good Reads website said it was about "the dissolution of a family by drugs and adultery" - funny how different readers can see different things in a book.  Yes there is drugs and adultery in the book but I would have not said they were the central theme to the book.

I love the 1960's and 1970's,  it's a time I would have loved to live in.  I enjoy reading about how people lived then and I love that people made serious stands for peace.  It is a decade when people power pushed for huge social change and achieved it!

I think this book captures the mood of this time extremely well - the father and daughter are quite possibly used as a contrast or a juxtaposition of the old and the new. The daughter is a baby boomer, she grew up with Woodstock and the Vietnam War.  To be born in this era and not be part of it would be unthinkable.  However, for her parents to be part of it was seen to be a rebellion - it went against all that they had believed in. The hard work that had gone in to achieving the status quo be generations before looked like it was being torn apart by this generation who engaged in free love, drugs and free thinking.  

For the parents, conformation was the only option (although the father griped about the triviality of suburbanity and ultimately moved on from this himself).  For the daughter non-conformation was the only option.  They were at an impasse so there was only one thing going to arise - a shattering of the family relationship.

Have you read this book?  I hope my account of it would make you want to read it.  Although out of print, it is available on Amazon (preowned).  

Check out this slating review when it was originally published!