At a glance:
- Author: Mona Simpson
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The 1990’s
- Setting: Central California
- Characters: Tom Owens, Jane, Mary di Natali, Olivia Michaelis, Noah Kaskie, Julie
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Love or romance, Marriage, Abandoned children, Schools or school life, Fathers, Illegitimacy, Wealth
- Locales: California
Mona Simpson’s third novel is in some ways a departure from her first two. The central figure of both earlier books (Anywhere But Here, 1987, and The Lost Father, 1991) was a girl named Ann Stevenson who later changed her name to Mayan Atissi and who was abandoned by her father and at times by her mother, who tried to make her a child film star. As a grown woman, she became obsessed with finding the lost father, and destroyed her life in the search. Both novels also distressed some reviewers because of their irregular narrative methods and their sometimes thorny...
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