Dear Fang, with Love

Starred review from January 4, 2016
Describing the Vilnius, Lithuania, where she’s gone on a summer history tour with her father, 17-year-old Vera emails her boyfriend, Fang, back in California: “So there is a thing called baroque architecture, and the word baroque means ‘imperfect pearl,’ which I think should be made into a sexual euphemism for clitoris.” The epistolary form is often an obstacle for writers, but these emails, interspersed throughout the book—otherwise narrated by Vera’s father, Lucas—bring tremendous depth and texture to the narrative, and also showcase Thorpe’s (The Girls from Corona del Mar) fabulous versatility, insight, and humor. Lucas and Vera are getting acquainted with the father-daughter relationship, as well as the country where they’ve arrived. Lucas didn’t meet Vera until she was four, and spent only weekends with her several years after that. Their sudden close companionship comes in the wake of Vera’s recent psychotic episode, after which she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which Lucas is struggling to accept and hoping to understand better over the course of the trip. Lucas, whose grandmother hailed from Lithuania, comes with a fair number of his own emotional complications, including his mythic and tangled ancestry. But while the themes of the book—mania, the Holocaust, and the devastating number of ways that any parent-child dynamic can go awry—are undeniably dark, Thorpe’s prose is light, often hilarious, and unshakably grounded in the concrete details of daily life. The story wraps up a bit too tidily, but Thorpe has written an absolute winner.

March 15, 2016
A father and daughter tour Lithuania in Thorpe's (The Girls from Corona del Mar, 2014) odd and deceptively simple family saga that spans countries and generations. As teenagers at Exeter, Lucas and Katya, drunk on love, impulsively decided to start a family ("Let's make a baby, baby"). The relationship collapsed soon after; Lucas and Katya spent most of their daughter's childhood semiestranged. Seventeen years later, the trio--Lucas, Katya, and now-teenage Vera--have arrived at a sort of hesitant familial equilibrium. And then Vera has a psychotic episode--or at least, it seems that way. The doctor is certain of the bipolar diagnosis; Vera herself is sure she's fine. Lucas, now an English professor, isn't sure what to think, but when a flier for educational tours of Vilnius appears in his faculty mailbox--"Experience History Firsthand"--he's sure what to do. "It was an absurd idea," he admits, "whisking her off to a strange Eastern European vacation in the midst of a mental health crisis," and yet the idea of a father-daughter pilgrimage to his grandmother's homeland strikes him as restorative, even hopeful. In Vilnius, the two bond over an endless itinerary of walking tours; internally, though, they're both lost in their own worlds: Lucas is consumed by the mystery of his grandmother's escape from the camps, while Vera's attention is fixed on more recent history--what happened between her parents? And--a question for both of them--what is really happening inside Vera's mind? Switching between Lucas' endearing narration and Vera's ultrateenage letters home to her boyfriend, Fang, the novel weaves a strange and strangely intoxicating web of histories, both personal and geopolitical. Perhaps as a reflection of her mental instability, Vera flickers in and out of focus. The book belongs instead to Lucas; it is his personal history that gives the novel its emotional weight. Melancholic and whimsical at once, Thorpe's novel is bumpy, quirky, and wholly original.

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September 1, 2016

Lucas has been an absentee father for most of his daughter Vera's 17 years. After she has a psychotic break at a party and is diagnosed as bipolar, he decides it would be a good idea to take her to the city of Vilnius, his grandmother's homeland. He signs up for a tour to learn about his family history, with the intention of helping his daughter heal. It immediately becomes clear to Lucas that he has no idea how to be a father. Through emails to her boyfriend, Fang, and comments to her father, readers become privy to Vera's unraveling. The novel focuses as much on Lucas and his self-doubt as it does on Vera's undoing. There's a mystery involving Lucas's grandmother and her escape from the Nazis as well as information on Lithuanian history. Vera has another psychotic break on the trip, with heartbreaking results. Crisp and captivating, the writing powerfully portrays a host of well-drawn characters. VERDICT Thorpe has created a persuasive, compelling, and heartfelt portrait of a troubled yet loving family. A striking look at mental illness that will long stay with readers.-Jane Ritter, Mill Valley School District, CA

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016
Lucas has only recently been involved with his 17-year-old daughter, Vera, and the past year has been a doozy. Newly diagnosed with a severe mental illness after a psychotic break, Vera is now heavily medicated and deeply depressed. Hoping to snap her out of the funk, Lucas takes her on a guided tour of his ancestral town in Lithuania. There, while touring the town's Russian, Polish, and Jewish sites, he hopes to forge a stronger relationship with Vera while chasing down more information about his family's mysterious past. But while the truth seems elusive, being father and friend to a scared teenager proves harder than he imagined, and Vera has her own questions about his role in her life. Lucas' point of view is an honest account of parenting a teen with mental illness, while e-mails and messages give voice to Vera's perspective. Thorpe, the highly regarded author of The Girls from Corona del Mar (2014) sets this tale of parental guilt and teenage angst against the town's WWII past, adding true-life authenticity to an already stirring story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2016

Readers never meet the titular Fang, who is the boyfriend of Vera, the emotionally unstable daughter of Lucas and Katya. Vera's emails to Fang are sent from Vilnius, Lithuania, where she and Lucas are on a Jewish history tour. Lucas is desperate to make up for his years as an absent father. Vilnius is not just a vacation destination; his legendary Grandma Sylvia was born there. During World War II she escaped from the Stutthof concentration camp and joined the Polish Resistance before migrating to the United States. Here is the chance for Lucas to find his family and prove he can be a real father. The novel is told in alternating voices, Lucas's first-person narration and Vera's emails and journal entries. While Vera's writing becomes increasing incoherent, Lucas is an affable and kindhearted narrator whose perspective makes the dark subjects of the novel accessible. VERDICT Thorpe's second novel (after The Girls from Corona del Mar) is recommended for all fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 11/2/15.]--Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015

Thorpe drew our attention with her 2014 debut, The Girls from Corona del Mar, which was long-listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Here, Lucas and Katya, boarding school seniors deeply in love, impulsively have a baby but soon separate; Lucas doesn't reenter daughter Vera's life until 17 years later. After Vera suffers a psychotic episode, though, he takes her to his ancestral land, Lithuania.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.