Charles Bock hails from Las Vegas. And it’s clear right from the opening pages of this memoir, that he’s been dealt a tough hand. He’s a reluctant father and working novelist, and his beloved wife Diane has just passed away from leukemia, leaving him to care for his three-year old daughter, Lily. And things will only get worse before you leave Chapter One. The book has a Sisyphean feel to it because nothing is ever easy in this story, except the clear, persistent love the writer has for his daughter. That drives the narrative and allows you to see struggle, self-doubt, and sacrifice as the essential journey we’re on with this family.
I Will Do Better brings the reader into how Charles and his wife Diane met, fell in love, and negotiated their way into parenthood. It’s a heartbreaking work on multiple levels, for you see the everyday struggles of a couple trying to find their place in this chaotic, ever-shifting world of NYC: Diane’s work as a massage therapist and Charles’s work to carve out his place as a novelist and teacher of creative writing. And then you witness what’s it like to cope with a world which wasn’t exactly of your choosing. Bock is clear throughout that he took coaxing to become a parent in the first place, and this memoir shows a father admitting his shortcomings every day. When he meets with therapist Dr. Melfi, she tells him “You are not going to ruin this child.” I think the memoir plays out this exhortation.
The joy of this memoir, of course, is watching Bock’s interactions with Lily, which are heart-warming and vexing, all at the same time. Vexing because they’re all too human. We feel what he sees as he’s trying to negotiate a temper-tantrum or exiting a theater too early or trying to enter a parent circle at the school or working his way into the complexities of dating life again. His negotiations with sitters, family, friends, and lovers add to the drama of what is already an emotionally fraught story of love, parental duty, and acceptance.
His fragility comes full circle when he wonders whether Lily is better off with his in-laws. When he leaves his wife’s ashes behind, we wonder whether he wants to leave that whole world of Diane and Lily behind. So much is embedded in that moment. And yet he persists. He carries on. He chooses to stay the course.
My favorite moment of the memoir comes in Chapter 11 when they encounter a citywide blackout, metaphorically what they’ve been periodically experiencing the whole story. “How are we going to survive? How were we going to doing this?” And the answer isn’t very far ahead: “We couldn’t possibly know what lay ahead. But I looked forward to experiencing it—all of the great handful that is life—with my little girl.” In a nutshell, that’s the joy of reading this memoir. An unexpected darkness, followed by an unequivocal journey of sadness into the uncertainty of light and love. Throughout it, I found myself waiting to see what turn awaited these characters, as Lily and Charles found themselves through each other. Lily is a rakish joy. Charles is an existential question. And yet, the bond they share pulls the reader into a beautiful place of accepting loss and putting aside what could have been in the past, ultimately to find the joy of accepting life and all its trials and tribulations, as something beautiful and worth fighting for in the present.
***
I Will Do Better
by Charles Bock
Harry N. Abrams; 208 p.
Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, and sign up for our mailing list.