What do you think?
Rate this book
Mayan Stevenson #2
The Lost Father
In her highly acclaimed first novel, Anywhere But Here, Simpson created one of the most astute yet vulnerable heroines in contemporary fiction. Now Mayan Atassi--once Mayan Stevenson--returns in an immensely powerful novel about love and lovelessness, fathers and fatherlessness, and the loyalties that shape us even when they threaten to destroy us.
Now a woman of twenty-eight and finally on her own in medical school, Mayan becomes obsessed with the father she never knew, leading her to hire detectives to dredge up the past, thus eroding her savings, ruining her career, and flirting with madness in a search spanning two continents.
"Ratifies the achievement of Anywhere But Here, attesting to its author's...dazzling literary gift and uncommon emotional wisdom."
--New York Times
"A breathtaking piece of fiction; Simpson is a writer who can break our heart and mend it in the same sentence."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer
Audiobook
First published January 1, 1992
40 people are currently reading
585 people want to read
About the author
Mona Simpson
35 books410 followersMona Simpson was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, then moved to Los Angeles as a young teenager. Her father was a recent immigrant from Syria and her mother was the daughter of a mink farmer and the first person in her family to attend college. Simpson went to Berkeley, where she studied poetry. She worked as a journalist before moving to New York to attend Columbia’s MFA program. During graduate school, she published her first short stories in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and Mademoiselle. She stayed in New York and worked as an editor at The Paris Review for five years while finishing her first novel, Anywhere But Here. After that, she wrote The Lost Father, A Regular Guy and Off Keck Road.
Her work has been awarded several prizes: A Whiting Prize, A Guggenheim, a grant from the NEA, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Prize, a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, Pen Faulkner finalist, and most recently a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
She worked ten years on My Hollywood. “It’s the book that took me too long because it meant to much to me,” she says.
Mona lives in Santa Monica with her two children and Bartelby the dog.
For more about upcoming readings and events, visit Mona's website http://www.monasimpson.com
and her Facebook author page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mona-Si...
Her work has been awarded several prizes: A Whiting Prize, A Guggenheim, a grant from the NEA, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Prize, a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, Pen Faulkner finalist, and most recently a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
She worked ten years on My Hollywood. “It’s the book that took me too long because it meant to much to me,” she says.
Mona lives in Santa Monica with her two children and Bartelby the dog.
For more about upcoming readings and events, visit Mona's website http://www.monasimpson.com
and her Facebook author page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mona-Si...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
July 10, 2016
Very good, but sad
October 11, 2009
I read 20 pages before I gave up. I was hesitant to read this for a long time because I was afraid that it would mirror my own situation and thought that would be a difficult subject to read about.
I shouldn't have worried. The main character is pathetic, as well as her mother, who pines for any man to become a replacement father for her daughter.
I couldn't stand the writing style nor the slow paced storyline. Blech.
I shouldn't have worried. The main character is pathetic, as well as her mother, who pines for any man to become a replacement father for her daughter.
I couldn't stand the writing style nor the slow paced storyline. Blech.
Want to read
April 15, 2017طبق کتاب زندگینامه استیو جابز، این کتاب نوشته خواهر استیو جابز و بر اساس زندگی پدر بیولوژیکی استیو جابز (آقای عبدالفتاح "جان" جندلی) نوشته شده است
December 8, 2013
this was a reread and there was a lot i didn't remember. i found it disorienting some of the disconnect between the story in this book and the story involving the same characters in anywhere but here. for one, Ann is now Mayan (something not even hinted at in the first book). also, the end of the first book indicates that Ann doesn't have the same struggles with money and success that her mother has, but it's apparent in the lost father that she does indeed have those same struggles. it is a slow read and it takes forever for Mayan to find her father. it's a bit of a letdown (which we knew it would be, i guess) when she finally does, as he wasn't even that hidden.
quotes to remember:
"Absence has qualities, properties all its own, but no voice." (following this is a musing on the color of his absence which is interesting...what is the color of various emotions?)
"Is it a fortunate or an unfortunate thing, to own a life that makes you believe in the invisible? I still don't know. Faith can come to a person slowly, like a gradual climb up a long stairs, or it can be heady and dizzying."
"We all own many existences besides the material one we are occupying now. But what I am talking about is not reincarnation. Because each version of ourselves, each possible manifestation, lives around us, like a circle of our own children, apparent to those who know us best."
"Our regular life looked different after we'd left even for a day. Walls grew up around it. Even daily life requires our allegiance in order to include us."
"If you are here you will stay slowly. Time is not for you until the end."
"Time for both my parents was a private thing they carried with them in hidden pockets."
"I'd known houses choked with hand-touched things. One tablecloth wouldn't be this mother's only legacy. People repeated themselves. There were few true quirks in character."
"It took years to understand that I was not the same as my grandmother or my mohter, that we were each marked at birth, as with a fingerprint on our soul and our faces, and that our lives, close as they were once in that white house, would move in solitary ways."
"I had veered off, out of the procession, and all of time had this quality of precarious lightness, subject to tilting over into another life altogether."
quotes to remember:
"Absence has qualities, properties all its own, but no voice." (following this is a musing on the color of his absence which is interesting...what is the color of various emotions?)
"Is it a fortunate or an unfortunate thing, to own a life that makes you believe in the invisible? I still don't know. Faith can come to a person slowly, like a gradual climb up a long stairs, or it can be heady and dizzying."
"We all own many existences besides the material one we are occupying now. But what I am talking about is not reincarnation. Because each version of ourselves, each possible manifestation, lives around us, like a circle of our own children, apparent to those who know us best."
"Our regular life looked different after we'd left even for a day. Walls grew up around it. Even daily life requires our allegiance in order to include us."
"If you are here you will stay slowly. Time is not for you until the end."
"Time for both my parents was a private thing they carried with them in hidden pockets."
"I'd known houses choked with hand-touched things. One tablecloth wouldn't be this mother's only legacy. People repeated themselves. There were few true quirks in character."
"It took years to understand that I was not the same as my grandmother or my mohter, that we were each marked at birth, as with a fingerprint on our soul and our faces, and that our lives, close as they were once in that white house, would move in solitary ways."
"I had veered off, out of the procession, and all of time had this quality of precarious lightness, subject to tilting over into another life altogether."
January 24, 2015
The skill with which Mona Simpson writes Mayan's voice is astounding. Use of imagery makes descriptions almost poetic at times, yet no less believable and all the more vivid. The empathy with which Mayan describes the people around her is eye-opening.
The themes in this book are layered intensely: Mayan lets men, from her father to her boyfriends, control her life. She has internalized bucket loads of misogyny and struggles with an eating disorder. Reading her tell her story, I had mixed emotions. Part of me was thinking "I hope she finds her father and he makes her life better, I hope she finds a man who will make her love herself, etc." and the other part of me shuddered in horror at these sexist ideas about life and love that exist, though in much smaller concentration, in me. I am so glad that I read this book.
The themes in this book are layered intensely: Mayan lets men, from her father to her boyfriends, control her life. She has internalized bucket loads of misogyny and struggles with an eating disorder. Reading her tell her story, I had mixed emotions. Part of me was thinking "I hope she finds her father and he makes her life better, I hope she finds a man who will make her love herself, etc." and the other part of me shuddered in horror at these sexist ideas about life and love that exist, though in much smaller concentration, in me. I am so glad that I read this book.
August 17, 2007
I was excited to read this book, but decided to quit reading it about a quarter of the way through, which is something I hate to do. If you are looking for a follow up to Anywhere But Here, don't bother reading this. I stopped reading it because I found it tedious and slow, the plot seemed to be going nowhere, and I was bored by the adult version of Ann/Mayan. Also, several minor details were changed from one book to the next, such as Ann's first name, her hometown, etc. Those things didn't make a huge difference, but why change them for no reason?
April 1, 2009
This book frustrated me. It's about a woman's quest to find her father but she went on and on ad nauseum and after 250 pages of reading the same things over and over again I gave up. Life is too short....
May 22, 2014
3.5 stars. So very, very, long.
January 4, 2023
I didn’t think I would finish this book but I did just now. I feel like I lost a sister finishing this to be honest. I really fundamentally interpreted this book as being becoming accustomed to and deifying loss, loss of weight, youth, dreams, mythological patriarchs- God. Fixation on losing things as a method of improvement rather than gaining skills, ideas, or beliefs.
Mayan struck me as such a true character- I really identified with her despite us not having much in common besides being alienated New Yorkers. She is a painfully honest person who was probably most free when she had the least control over her life.
There is something about the loss of a painful childhood where there was barely room for air or hindsight that devastated me. The descriptions of Mayan riding her bike and her relationship to a young Stevie Howard- it just hurts. Her home was transient. Her home is something beyond her. Her home was in toothpick castles and stolen kisses and I just really liked that.
It's so easy to fault her for losing what she couldn't grasp- and the book is about her forgiving herself I guess.
I did find the midsection during the Briggses Christmas party hard to get through, but afterwards this book was almost painfully real.
Mayan struck me as such a true character- I really identified with her despite us not having much in common besides being alienated New Yorkers. She is a painfully honest person who was probably most free when she had the least control over her life.
There is something about the loss of a painful childhood where there was barely room for air or hindsight that devastated me. The descriptions of Mayan riding her bike and her relationship to a young Stevie Howard- it just hurts. Her home was transient. Her home is something beyond her. Her home was in toothpick castles and stolen kisses and I just really liked that.
It's so easy to fault her for losing what she couldn't grasp- and the book is about her forgiving herself I guess.
I did find the midsection during the Briggses Christmas party hard to get through, but afterwards this book was almost painfully real.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 23, 2023
Mona Simpson is famous for a number of reasons. She was married to one of the writers for The Simpsons, and he did name the character Mona Simpson after her. She is also the half sister of Steve Jobs.
And while many bibliophiles will immediately think of those 2 facts when they see her name, fewer people know about her childhood years.
Mona Simpson's parents divorced in 1962 when she was 5 years old. She did not stay in touch with her father for several years throughout the 1960's and the first years of the 1970's.
"The Lost Father" is entirely fiction, though the story is about a woman who spends several years searching for her father, and the narrator/ protagonist of the story is clearly based on Mona Simpson's experiences of her years in which she had not been communicating with her father at all.
I'm intentionally not saying any more than this about the plot, I don't want to reveal any further details of the story. Mona Simpson is extremely skilled at developing characters, if you enjoy reading novels in which the characters have depth to them, you'll thoroughly enjoy "The Lost Father".
And while many bibliophiles will immediately think of those 2 facts when they see her name, fewer people know about her childhood years.
Mona Simpson's parents divorced in 1962 when she was 5 years old. She did not stay in touch with her father for several years throughout the 1960's and the first years of the 1970's.
"The Lost Father" is entirely fiction, though the story is about a woman who spends several years searching for her father, and the narrator/ protagonist of the story is clearly based on Mona Simpson's experiences of her years in which she had not been communicating with her father at all.
I'm intentionally not saying any more than this about the plot, I don't want to reveal any further details of the story. Mona Simpson is extremely skilled at developing characters, if you enjoy reading novels in which the characters have depth to them, you'll thoroughly enjoy "The Lost Father".
April 9, 2023
Skip the first 200 pages. Stream of consciousness BS. Honestly. I’ve read other books this way. This one I read them all.
I’d like to murder the editor. Seriously. (Any book over 350 pages should require an editor’s forward explaining how every chapter was warranted.)
Oops. My review seems unreasonably long now. 🫠.
I’ve never said THIS before: I think the authoress writes an honest character that a man would never understand. So there.
And yet, this novel, with its fresh prose, refreshing meter and clipping social narrative lights the way for modern “theory of mind” novelists. The individual as self hero, plugging through the longest longing of longings. Resolved by 30.
Five stars.
And to the editors at Knopf? I’m glad she didn’t acknowledge you. You deserve to be humiliated. Unless you are a man. Then you should have to do a lecture series on The Lost Father.
To make audiences.
I’d like to murder the editor. Seriously. (Any book over 350 pages should require an editor’s forward explaining how every chapter was warranted.)
Oops. My review seems unreasonably long now. 🫠.
I’ve never said THIS before: I think the authoress writes an honest character that a man would never understand. So there.
And yet, this novel, with its fresh prose, refreshing meter and clipping social narrative lights the way for modern “theory of mind” novelists. The individual as self hero, plugging through the longest longing of longings. Resolved by 30.
Five stars.
And to the editors at Knopf? I’m glad she didn’t acknowledge you. You deserve to be humiliated. Unless you are a man. Then you should have to do a lecture series on The Lost Father.
To make audiences.
May 12, 2018
This is good, but I had a terrible time getting momentum going. I think it could have been a third the length and still worked the same. I liked it a good deal, but it seemed to get something done and then do the same thing for fifty more pages.
August 27, 2021
I was interested in this book bc it explores some similar themes as Are You My Mother? by C H Avosa. I decided to come back to this another time. I’m struggling to get traction. The writing is strong but I’m not invested in what happens.
September 28, 2020
Major Proust vibes in this book about memory. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes overwritten.
May 22, 2022
My first Mona Simpson book that I read. I skipped a lot of it and only read parts about her father and if she found him.
August 23, 2011
Though I did not enjoy this book as much as "My Hollywood" or "Anywhere But Here", I still really really loved reading it and was glad that it was so long and there was so much for me to experience! I think one of the reasons I didn't like the book in a 5-star sense is that there was not an extremely strong and interesting character like Lola or Adele. This is a sequel to "Anywhere But Here", but in that book I was absolutely fascinated by Adele, more so than her daughter Mayan, even though she was the main narrator in that book (and the only one in this book). Adele made rare appearances in this novel and I loved each one but it literally would last for a few sentences! Simpson's style of writing still continues to impress me though. It is rare that an author can write such long, descriptive portions of a novel and keep me entertained and reading. Usually in that situation I find myself skimming on "auto-pilot". I also really liked the last couple chapters and what Mayan's feelings about her father ended up being. I thought it was realistic and extremely appropriate. I only have one book left to read by Mona Simpson and I'm upset that it's just one more!
June 22, 2009
Usually when a book takes eight months to read, it does not bode well, but The Lost Father becomes worthwhile - eventually. I began The Lost Father in August, hoping to finish it before school started. But instead, I was bogged down in the stilted melodrama of Mona Simpson’s prose. The novel follows Mayan, main character, as she searches for the father she has not since childhood, and of whom no record can be found. Mayan carries her weighty emotional baggage from medical school in New York, to Egypt, her father’s homeland, and across the Western US.
I felt shackled by the prose and needy lead, so I set the book down in September. When I picked it back up in April, it was a completely different experience. The plot at this point in the novel begins to move more quickly, as actual progress is made in Mayan’s search, as well as in her self-awareness.
Though Simpson’s style is not my favourite, she undoubtedly does it well. If early-90s novels of self-discovery are your thing, I’d recommend The Lost Father. If not, don’t bother.
I felt shackled by the prose and needy lead, so I set the book down in September. When I picked it back up in April, it was a completely different experience. The plot at this point in the novel begins to move more quickly, as actual progress is made in Mayan’s search, as well as in her self-awareness.
Though Simpson’s style is not my favourite, she undoubtedly does it well. If early-90s novels of self-discovery are your thing, I’d recommend The Lost Father. If not, don’t bother.
September 26, 2008
I got about half way through this book before Inter Library Loan started screaming at me daily about its over-due status. It is now on the list of books I get to read as a reward when the dissertation is done. I really enjoyed the first half though. It made me realize that often time I read and appreciate books I don't really enjoy reading. I read them because they are "important" for some reason or another. But this one I actually had fun with and sought out moments to get through a chapter.
One of the other reviews calls it a "soap opera." Maybe that's why I enjoyed it?
One of the other reviews calls it a "soap opera." Maybe that's why I enjoyed it?
February 5, 2012
Note to myself: Discuss why so discursive and whether that was a good choice. (Also how easy it was to forget characters over the length.) Length in the sense of not being a page-turner. Cf. with Game of Thrones series which are this long or longer but page-turners. Not the emotional wrenching for me as her other book which focused on Owens (Jobs).
I had read Off Heck Road and My Hollywood before her brother, Steve Jobs, died and before I knew their relationship. This book illustrates what knowing one has a father who has rejected your mother and you can rule ones life.
I had read Off Heck Road and My Hollywood before her brother, Steve Jobs, died and before I knew their relationship. This book illustrates what knowing one has a father who has rejected your mother and you can rule ones life.
June 21, 2009
There are many books on romantic love but Mayan's unrequited love for her father is not covered as much. Everytime I picked up this novel, there was a refreshing insight or memory. I was impressed by Mona Simpson revealing of the many layers of Mayan's life affected by her absent father. The descriptions of Mayan's mother, father, and grandmother were a wonderful portrait of how those close to you have the ability to both hurt you and love you.
March 6, 2010
This book is so rich and a wonderful read. I can really relate with the protagonist as a sort of eccentric, but down-to-earth outsider. The premise of the story is simple. She is looking for her father, but the book is intricate and filled with little stories in between. I love it and don't want it to end.
May 6, 2007
I tried so hard to like this book. I pushed my way through half of it and complained to whoever I was with about what a bad book it was. I did this until I was told that I was being annoying. So I stopped reading it. That was a really good decision.
May 12, 2008
Add me to the list of non-finishers. "Anywhere but Here" was so good, and this one was so bad, I started to wonder if she actually wrote both of them. Interestingly, though, when her mother makes brief appearances in this book, things perk up a little.
January 21, 2008
The writing was beautiful, but I found the character whiney and negative. The story dragged on and I wanted to give the character a whack across the face and say, "Get over it! Move on!" While it was effective at expressing obsession, it was unpleasant to read.
August 19, 2008
Really disappointing as a follow-up to Anywhere But Here. I was kind of surprised by the glowing reviews on the book after reading it. I didn't feel any empathy for the narrator and considering the relentlessness and single-mindedness of the book's focus, it's necessary.
January 1, 2011
so-so read. I kept reading b/c i just wanted to know what happen! not because i was that engaged by the story. I think my view is colored by my impatient for people in general who can't get their lives together.
July 12, 2014
•
A captivating odyssey…first, what are the patterns of existence and experience…second, what's my place among the patterns…finally, what's next? Provocative musings framed as and by beautiful languaging…thoroughly satisfying. What are you waiting for…go find a copy…start reading!
•
December 12, 2007
The much-anticipated sequel to Anywhere but Here...and I hated it! It was a cheesy soap opera, which would have been fine had it not had arty pretensions. Oh well.
Read
September 18, 2008F Sim
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews