Reviewed: “So Long, Daddy” by H.B. Gilmour

This is yet another book that I rescued from a trip to the dump. It was a little while ago, so I don’t remember exactly why I saved it, but I did. And I only got around to reading it now. It surprised me.

So Long, Daddy was written in 1983 and it’s about the late ’70s, early ’80s high life in New York City. Models, photographers, clubs, sex, and drugs are the topic at hand. Only H.B. Gilmour has woven children into the story, specifically children who were abandoned by a renowned photographer and orphaned by a suicidal breast cancer sufferer. Maddie and Jason’s mother decides that the only place for her children is with the father they don’t know. The problem is that she hated him so badly that they hate him too, without knowing him.

Naomi is a loosely defined lawyer who works for the publishing house that handled Maddie and Jason’s mother books. For some reason, apparently the 1983 stereotypes of it being so odd that a woman is a lawyer that she’s the best candidate for childcare, she’s put in charge of their welfare. Only she’s got her own father issues.

There’s a bunch of sex, drugs, and resentment after that.

Then, to my dismay as I stayed up until 1:30 in the morning to finish what was actually and oddly interesting story, everything wraps up in about five pages and we all live happily ever after.

The book might still get a trip to the dump.