Review: Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe

Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe

Blurb from Goodreads

Lucas and Katya were boarding school seniors when, blindingly in love, they decided to have a baby. Seventeen years later, after years 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 wildly accomplished, stunningly emotional book. 

My Review:
I am honestly torn between four and a half and five stars for this one -- it's almost like I don't even know what five stars means anymore.  That being, said, this is definitely one of my favorite reads of this year and also completely surprised me.  Not because I wasn't expecting it to be good but because not only was the writing absolutely astounding but the story also hooked me from the beginning.  I loved the way in which this story was told -- each chapter began with a letter from Vera to her boyfriend and then transitioned to a first person POV from Lucas, Vera's father; there was some overlap but it was so interesting to have each scene told from such varied perspectives, none of which was repetitive.  The epistolary format from Vera coupled with the first person POV from Lucas worked so well that I looked forward to the alternating narratives to get a complete picture of what was going on.  Most of the book takes place in Vilnius, Lithuania and it was made to seem so, so magical!  Of course, there was also this very serious undercurrent of history and sorrow to the city from its German occupation during World War II.  Many of the characters in the book are Jewish and American and have come to the city for a history tour and to try and find out more about their relatives that lived in Vilnius before and during the occupation; many of their relatives were in concentration camps or were the only survivors of their family because they somehow escaped.  It may seem like there are a lot of threads to this story but it didn't feel that way when reading it -- everything and everyone seemed interconnected.  I really loved this book; it has its sad and scary moments but it is so beautiful in both.

I highly recommend this to fans of literary fiction; this is a brilliant story and a stunning portrayal of a different side of bi-polarism -- being a semi-absent parent to a bi-polar teenager.  And yet, it is so much more -- it is about our history, our genealogy, our second chances and, yes, a parent's love.  I was reminded of some my other all-time favorites when I finished this one -- not necessarily because of the similarity in the plots, although you can find similar threads in all of these, but because I was just so blown away with awe and beauty --  Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel.  Dear Fang, With Love comes out today, May 24, 2016, you can purchase HERE, and I hope you consider reading this one!

Yet who was anyone to police someone else's thoughts and decide which were sane and which insane? Who were doctors to inspect my daughter's brain, determine that her ideas were delusions, her mind unfit? That was the thing about bipolar--there was no blood test, no brain scan, nothing that went into the diagnosis except one person deciding another person was insane.