Growing up on the Upper West Side of New York City in the 1970s, in an
apartment filled with dazzling literary and artistic characters,
Priscilla Gilman worshiped her brilliant, adoring, and mercurial father,
the writer, theater critic, and Yale School of Drama professor Richard
Gilman. But when Priscilla was ten years old, her mother, renowned
literary agent Lynn Nesbit, abruptly announced that she was ending the
marriage. The resulting cascade of disturbing revelations--about her
parents' hollow marriage, her father's double life and tortured sexual
identity--fundamentally changed Priscilla's perception of her father, as
she attempted to protect him from the depression that had long shadowed
him.
A wrenching story about what it means to be the daughter of a demanding
parent, a revelatory window into the impact of divorce, and a searching
reflection on the nature of art and criticism, The Critic's Daughter
is an unflinching account of loss and grief--and a radiant testament of
forgiveness and love.