Rufi Thorpe. (2016). Dear Fang, with Love: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Rufi Thorpe. 2016. Dear Fang, With Love: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Rufi Thorpe, Dear Fang, With Love: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

Rufi Thorpe. Dear Fang, With Love: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

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1. • value: Teenage girls
2. • value: family
3. • value: World War II
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5. • value: Fathers and daughters
6. • value: schizophrenia
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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Thorpe, Rufi
   • bioText: RUFI THORPE received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. Her first novel, The Girls from Corona del Mar, was long-listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. She lives in California with her husband and sons.
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2016-05-24T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Dear Fang, with Love

fullDescription

A bold, spellbinding novel featuring one of the most fascinating protagonists in recent memory, Dear Fang, With Love tells the story of seventeen-year-old Vera—ravishing, troubled, wildly intelligent—who travels to Europe with her estranged father, hoping that an immersion in history might help them forget his past mistakes and her uncertain future.
Lucas and Katya were boarding school seniors when, blindingly in love, they decided to have a baby. Seventeen years later, after a decade of absence, Lucas is a weekend dad, newly involved in his daughter Vera's life. But after Vera suffers a terrifying psychotic break at a high school party, Lucas takes her to Lithuania, his grandmother's homeland, for the summer. Here, in the city of Vilnius, Lucas hopes to save Vera from the sorrow of her diagnosis. As he uncovers a secret about his grandmother, a Home Army rebel who escaped Stutthof, Vera searches for answers of her own. Why did Lucas abandon her as a baby? What really happened the night of her breakdown? And who can she trust with the truth? Skillfully weaving family mythology and Lithuanian history with a story of mental illness, inheritance, young love, and adventure, Rufi Thorpe has written a breathtakingly intelligent, emotionally enthralling book.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Mary Pauline Lowry, The Huffington Post
   • content: "A deeply-detailed, beautiful, often hilarious novel, Dear Fang, With Love unflinchingly examines mental illness, the Holocaust, the power of family myths, and the relationships between generations. A captivating, compulsively readable and utterly original book."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly (starred review)
   • content: "Tremendous... Showcase[s] Thorpe's fabulous versatility, insight, and humor... 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... Thorpe has written an absolute winner."
3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     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.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     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.

     COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     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.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     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.)

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     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.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     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.

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A bold, spellbinding novel featuring one of the most fascinating protagonists in recent memory, Dear Fang, With Love tells the story of seventeen-year-old Vera—ravishing, troubled, wildly intelligent—who travels to Europe with her estranged father, hoping that an immersion in history might help them forget his past mistakes and her uncertain future.
Lucas and Katya were boarding school seniors when, blindingly in love, they decided to have a baby. Seventeen years later, after a decade of absence, Lucas is a weekend dad, newly involved in his daughter Vera's life. But after Vera suffers a terrifying psychotic break at a high school party, Lucas takes her to Lithuania, his grandmother's homeland, for the summer. Here, in the city of Vilnius, Lucas hopes to save Vera from the sorrow of her diagnosis. As he uncovers a secret about his grandmother, a Home Army rebel who escaped Stutthof, Vera searches for answers of her own. Why did Lucas abandon her as a baby?...

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