Literary Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
What Remains of a Father
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About the book
A father’s relationship with his children doesn’t end all at once. It disappears piece by piece. A missed holiday. An unanswered call. An empty chair. Until one day, there is nothing left but silence. In What Remains of a Father, one man looks back on the choices, conversations, and fractures that brought his family to this point. He knows what happened. Or at least, he knows his version of it. As memory collides with regret, love, anger, and the things left unsaid, the line between explanation and justification begins to blur. A deeply personal story of family and estrangement, What Remains of a Father asks a deceptively simple question: When a family falls apart, who gets to decide what really happened?
Synopsis
What Remains of a Father is a character-driven literary family drama told through the perspective of a father whose relationships with his children have gradually disappeared. Looking back across years of family life, he revisits the moments he believes brought them here: arguments and misunderstandings, missed holidays and unanswered calls, marriages and divorces, moments of tenderness, and wounds that never quite healed. He searches those memories for an explanation, trying to understand not only what happened, but whether anything could have been different. But memory belongs to the person doing the remembering. The father tells his story with conviction, yet the novel leaves room between what he says, what others say, and what the reader begins to see. His account isn't presented as a puzzle with a hidden solution or a final revelation that explains everything. Instead, readers are invited to sit inside the uncertainty and decide for themselves how much weight to give each version of the past. At its heart, What Remains of a Father is about estrangement, grief, parenthood, responsibility, and the stories families construct about one another. It explores what remains when love is still present but a relationship is not, and whether understanding how a family broke apart is the same thing as knowing who broke it.
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Reader reviews
Jack
What Remains of a Father by Michael J. Tunney This book was a really interesting read. It made me think about how two people can go through the same situation but see things completely differently. I found the main character interesting because he genuinely believes he is doing the right thing, but as the story goes on, you start to question his version of events. I liked how the story slowly builds tension through small moments rather than having something big happen in every chapter. It made me want to keep reading because I wanted to understand what was really going on. Some parts did feel a little repetitive, and I think the middle could have been shorter, but the overall story kept me interested. What I liked most was how the book makes you think about family, relationships, and how people see themselves compared to how others see them. It also leaves you thinking after you've finished reading, which I always appreciate in a book. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to readers who like realistic stories with complicated characters and a bit of mystery surrounding what is really happening. It's not a fast-paced read, but I think the ideas behind it make it worth reading. Thank you to the author and The Early Shelf for the opportunity to read this book as an ARC reader!