Book Review - What is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman

Synopsis:  Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda.

Setting in motion the novel’s chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents—including a German U-boat’s sinking of the Nova Scotia–Newfoundland ferry Caribou—lend intense narrative power to Norman’s uncannily layered story.

Wyatt’s account of the astonishing events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later.

First Line:  "Marlais, today is March 27, 1967, your twenty-first birthday.  I'm writing because I refuse any longer to have my life defined by what I haven't told you."

Random Quote:  "There in the library I pictured the walls of the shed, all but completely covered with newspaper headlines and articles and photographs.  You read the incidents left to right like a book, in the chronological order in which they happened.  All the U-boat attacks off Atlantic Canada were represented - the ferries lost, the number of casualties, the number of dead and missing and presumed lost, photographs of people waiting at docks and wharfs, of church gatherings and wakes."

Review:  Simply stunning.  Subtle, evocative, and filled with undercurrents so strong that at times you may feel like you're going to be pulled under, What is Left the Daughter is a beautiful meditation on family, unrequited love, prejudice and fear.

Nova Scotia - Image via Wikipedia

This epistolary novel does justice to its form.  The narrator (and letter writer) is Wyatt whose story is bookended by two suicides and the detritus of a drowned U-boat.  Set in Nova Scotia during WWII, Norman uses real life U-boat incidents off the coast of Canada to build dread.  They are always there, hovering in the background, waiting to attack.  The War is always there, too, adding to the dread and to the terrible events in the book.


Many terrible things happen in this book, yet Norman does not treat them melodramatically.  His narrator's tone is always matter-of-fact and this makes these events more real.  Just as in real life, you do what you have to in the moment, and afterward you learn to live with it (or not).  Wyatt's is a life that is punctuated by great sadness and loss, and still he goes on - one foot in front of the other - just like the rest of us.

U-boat - Image by phatcontroller via Flickr

The book reminds me in some ways of Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.  Both are haunting, lyrical, and filled with water, you can open either book to any page and find breathtaking sentences on each page.  It was an abiding pleasure to be in the hands of such a skilled author.  Highly recommended.

FTC Disclosure:  Advance review copy from the publisher

Rating:  Orange

Reading Challenges:  Historical Fiction Reading Challenge