What is Left the Daughter By Howard Norman

264 pages

Weird, sad stuff. I felt as though I should have liked this book – it was certainly stirring and shocking and well-written. It is also overflowing with tragedy - the main character’s parents’ deaths are the town scandal, the story is set during WWII and another tragedy occurs involving a U-boat off the coast of their hometown in Nova Scotia, a murder is at the center of the plotline. It has all the makings of a touching book, but I felt left out, held at a distance from the story. Perhaps I supposed to feel that way – the book is structured to be an apology letter the protagonist writes to his estranged daughter. I understood that deep fracturing of a family was supposed to be the heart of this novel – but I didn’t feel as though the story had a heartbeat.