I don't find Father Fiction quite as well-written or as mesmerizing as Miller's other works, but I also don't think I'm quite the target audience for this one. While I appreciate what he has to say and WOULD recommend this one, I'd probably only do so after recommending Blue Like Jazz first. ( )

This book was not really written for me. A) I am a woman and B) I have a great dad. This book was written primarily to the staggering number of fatherless boys and men out there, who struggle with their identities and figuring out how they fit into the world. Something like 90 percent of men in prison come from fatherless families, and knowing this (and being a fatherless son who could have easily ended up in prison) Miller lays out some life lessons for those who find themselves without a dad to guide them.

Yet even though this wasn’t written for me, I loved it. The way Miller sees the world is so fresh and organic and realistic. It doesn’t feel like there is much to him that was shaped by an editor — it’s just raw conversations about a difficult subject. This is not a light-hearted book. He owns up to mistakes and his own insecurities and some of the stories will break your heart. He doesn’t have all the answers. But he does offer up a number of helpful things that young men can do to recognize that although they do not have fathers to guide them, they can still be men and get along in this world. He also covers God as Your True Father, but does so without seeming trite or rehashing ideas that so many other books with similar content cover.

I want to give this book to pretty much everyone who has lost a parent, whether through neglect, death, or other reasons. I think it has the power to change the way these people see themselves and their circumstances.

And then there was this random bit, which I loved:

I wondered if all the relationships we have — relationsionships with our lover, our mother, our friends — are not unlike blurred photos of our relationship with God, as though they are foreshadowings in the sappy prologue of an eternal novel.

I wondered if sliding our arms around a woman’s hips wasn’t a kind of infantile introduction to the metaphysical. If I allow myself, I can see God holding up flashcards as I fall in love with a woman, cards that say, “this is love, I am like this love, only better.”

“See?” God says, pointing at the flashcard with the word “love,” then pointing at His own chest while I move down the woman’s lips to her chin and her neck. “See?” God says, putting down the flashcard with “love” and picking up the word “oneness.” He says, “Get it? Do you see? It’s all living metaphors. It’s a hint of oneness — like My Trinity.”

Read my full review here: http://letseatgrandpa.com/2010/08/30/55-father-fiction-by-donald-miller/ ( )