A Father's Words

"Cy Riemer-fifty-ish, divorced, and father of four-surveys the dispersal of his family with a mixture of anxiety, humor, sadness, and pride. In this wry, moving, and wise novel, Richard Stern offers his masterful portrait of Cy as the quintessential caring yet controlling parent, a relentless seeker of self-knowledge whose search is intensified through conflicts with his brilliant, ne'er-do-well son Jack. The "manipulation of a smart, sane, self-justifying narrator . . . is not the least of Stern's achievements in this delicate fabrication of tough prose and tender adjustment of sentiment."-Geoffrey Wolff, *Los Angeles Times* "Richard Stern's novels are robustly intelligent, very funny, and beguilingly humane. He knows as much as anyone writing American prose about family mischief, intellectual shenanigans, love blunders-and about writing American prose."-Philip Roth "A delectable rhetorical display. . . . "-*The New Yorker* "Anyone who has read Richard Stern's previous novels won't need to be told he is an unusually crisp and intelligent writer, with a sharp edge to his wit; and in *A Father's Words* he runs true to form. Many of the book's pleasures are incidental: jokes, intellectual cadenzas, agile turns of phrase . . . The author's powers of farcical invention climax in a brilliant, bitter episode where . . . the younger man proclaims his final failure . . . Mr. Stern has written an excellent novel."-John Gross, *New York Times* "Richard Stern is American letters' unsung comic writer about serious matters . . . [*A Father's Words*] produced in this reviewer an apostolic desire to convince a wider audience to try Stern, especially the vintage Stern."-Doris Grumbach, *Chicago Tribune*