Daddy

What Can You Do with a General

Linda was inside, on her phone ­to who, this early? From the hot tub, John watched her pace in her robe and an old swimsuit in a faded tropical print that probably belonged to one of the girls. It was nice to drift a little in the water, to glide to the other side of the tub, holding his coffee above the waterline, the jets churning away. The fig tree was bare, had been for a month now, but the persimmon trees were full. The kids should bake cookies when they get here, he thought, persimmon cookies. Wasn t that what Linda used to make, when the kids were little? Or what else ­jam, maybe? All this fruit going to waste, it was disgusting. He d get the yard guy to pick a few crates of persimmons before the kids came, so that all they d have to do was bake them. Linda would know where to find the recipe.

The screen door banged. Linda folded her robe, climbed into the hot tub.

Sasha s flight s delayed.

Till?

Probably won t land until four or five.

Holiday traffic would be a nightmare then, coming back from the airport ­an hour there, then two hours back, if not more. Sasha didn t have her license, couldn t rent a car, not that she would think to offer.

And she said Andrew s not coming, Linda said, making a face. Linda was convinced that Sasha s boyfriend was married, though she d never brought it up with Sasha.

Linda fished a leaf out of the water and flicked it into the yard, then settled in with the book she d brought. Linda read a lot: She read books about angels and saints and rich white women from the past with eccentric habits. She read books by the mothers of school shooters and books by healers who said that cancer was really a self-­love problem. Now it was a memoir by a girl who d been kidnapped at the age of eleven. Held in a backyard shed for almost ten years.

Her teeth were in good shape, Linda said. Considering. She says she scraped her teeth every night with her fingernails. Then he

Emma Cline is the author of The Girls, which was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and the John Leonard Award from the National Book Critics Circle. She received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. She is from Northern California.

Daddy approaches questions about power and connivance from a flurry of different angles. . . . [Cline] comes for the king and she doesn t miss. Los Angeles Times

Brilliant, dark . . . Cline s fiction is full of binaries pressing up against one another: youthful promise and life s realities; success and failure; darkness and humor; external beauty and internal rot. Wall Street Journal
 
Cline is an astonishingly gifted stylist, but it is her piercing understanding of modern humiliation that makes these stories vibrate with life. . . . Brilliant. The New York Times
 
Cline is a master of fiction that wallows in the heavy weight of the unsaid, with perversion and darkness simmering beneath her characters tightly controlled surfaces. Daddy s ten masterful, provocative stories confirm that Cline is a staggering talent. Esquire
 
A hair-raising collection of short fiction that at once discomfits and titillates, delineating the various ways women and men wrestle with the male gaze. O Magazine

Cline s sharply drawn characters are the cowed, contemplative survivors of self-inflicted trauma, both seismic and quotidian. . . . Cline writes with such grace and precision that every sentence is a joy to absorb. LitHub

Daddy is a striking achievement, the assured work of a young writer with talent to burn. The Boston Globe
 
The payoffs are as gratifying as they are shattering. Publishers Weekly
 
Scintillating . . . This is a technically perfect book. New York
 
Cline s stories constitute a riveting, timely tapestry of realizations, motivations, and desires. Booklist