DADDY

Tales of coastal malaise from the author of The Girls (2016).

Several of the stories in this collection are about the failures and disappointments of older men. In “What Can You Do With a General,” a father tries to understand his adult children when they come home for Christmas. In “Son of Friedman,” a washed-up writer who has left California for New York endures the premier of his son’s terrible film and makes an awkward attempt to interest a more successful friend in a new screenplay. Cline’s voice is understated; her pace is slow and steady. The reader arrives at the central conflict of the story obliquely—or, in some cases, not at all. The details of the misdeeds at the heart of “Menlo Park” and “Northeast Regional” are never revealed. There’s a sameness to these stories, and a few read as if the moments in time they depict were chosen at random. The selections that have young female protagonists are more engaging. The main character in “Los Angeles” endures the atmosphere of sexual harassment that’s just part of the job for women in service industries; her attempt to reclaim some agency has its own risks. Twenty-four-year-old Kayla is hiding out from the paparazzi in “The Nanny.” She has no remorse for her sexual dalliance with the famous-actor father of the child in her care. Her feelings about the affair are primarily shaped by how the scandal is playing out on social media. “She came across a new photo—she looked only okay. A certain pair of jeans she loved was not, she saw, as flattering as she’d imagined it to be. She saved the photo to her phone so she could zoom in on it later.” The old men in the other stories gathered here would no doubt find this reaction cynical and self-absorbed—an example of the superficiality inherent in growing up online. Kayla’s peers, however, might note that these old men grew up shaped by the privilege of thinking that the world owed them something.

Well-crafted depictions of people at crisis points in their lives. Some crises depicted are more compelling than others.