Old-Dad

by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

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114 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1919

About the author

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a nationally recognized American author. She was a frequent contributor to The Ladies' Home Journal.aEleanor Hallowell Abbott was a nationally recognized American author. She was a frequent contributor to The Ladies' Home Journal. Born: September 22, 1872, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Died: June 4, 1958, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States Spouse: Fordyce Coburn (m. 1908) Parents: Edward Abbott Education: Radcliffe College

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book published in 1919, it was immensely ignorant of any sort of international conflict.

It was sweet to see a father learning to be protective of a young daughter on the brink of womanhood—a girl with a child’s aptitude for trouble and drama and yet with a woman’s body and beauty to bring trouble closer. However, a lot of the story was just so vague that it was difficult to understand what was meant or what was going on.

[Martin Kloos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book would make a fantastic stage play. The characters build and grow and draw you in. The only criticism is the weak ending. You can see the book coming to an end and the characters have been split and brought together perfectly for a big finale, but then the book just finishes. A shame. I would still recommend this to people as some of the lines are classics.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her memoir Me: Stories of My Life Hepburn tells the story of how she was written up for smoking half of a single cigarette in her dorm room, and threatened with expulsion. She was alone in her room at the time, she must have had neighbours as "charming" as the ones I had in the early 80s. In those days women's colleges were basically an extension of high school and there were a LOT of rules. Abbott's book begins with the main character being expelled for breaking the after-hours rule, the no-men-in-your-room rule, and a couple more. The college head has a very stiff stick up her behind and will hear no explanations or excuses, she is simply told to pack her bags. The story even makes the newspapers! Bad enough that they even let "co-eds" get eddication, look what they DO with it! Of course the boy in question is not even scolded; those were the days of "wild oats" for boys and moral ruin for girls. At most someone would sigh and say, "Ah, boys will be boys."

The book begins as if the reader already knows the girl's story; her parents are divorced, her mother off somewhere else, and she has grown up in boarding schools and summer camps. She apparently only met her father just before the beginning of the book, and there is no mention at all of her relationship with her mother if there was one. IMO the meeting of father and daughter, and getting to know each other a bit over the summer would have made a better book, but Abbott chose not to go there. Covered with shame and public opprobrium, The Girl is ready to crawl in a hole so "Old-Dad" (an odd moniker if they hardly know each other) decides to take her away to what sounds like one of the Sea Islands. After that it gets confusing, as Abbott brings in situations as if the reader already knows all about them. The author's penchant for writing about young male alcoholics who really are decent fellas is to the fore again, unfortunately. This time said YMA also appears to have TB!
The end of the tale twists and turns and gets so lost that said Girl has to have a fit of "brain fever" complete with delirium so that her creator can leap forward several months in time and write the ending to a completely different version of the story.
I like the texture of Abbot's writing, but this was a bit odd. Not bad for turn of the 20th century chicklit.