Rating: 
Summary: moving through grief to growth
Review: "Fatherless Women" explores what for many of us will be a scary, and challenging journey: Growing up from "good girls" to become "smart women." With lots of stories from dozens of women, it shows us how we grieve -- not always what you'd expect! -- and how, if we let ourselves mourn the death of our fathers, we can learn to appreciate them as humans and then understand all the ways they influenced us. With other stories, we're shown how this new insight not only helps us with our sadness and guilt -- it can also free us to be the women we want to be, taking the best of our fathers' legacies to us and dumping the worst (including our own overreactions). An invaluable guide -- and really affirming of my experience since my dad's passing!
Rating:
Summary: Engaging, Personal, Reflective, Sensitive... Wonderful!
Review: ... Clea Simon, truly, is a very gifted writer. I found this book to be engaging, personal, reflective, sensitive, and wonderful. I could almost put myself in her shoes as I read about her thoughts and feelings, her stories about the lives of other women in similar circumstances, and her commentaries on our sociological condition as a generation of people who are struggling to make our own, new ways out of the old paradigm of the patriarchal past, a paradigm which has certainly paid its toll on all of us.... Nevertheless, this is not a book about politics; far from! It is a book about one woman's journey through life, specifically relating to the issues surrounding the loss of her beloved father, and how she reconciled all of her feelings concerning this loss. Along the way, she weaves a tapestry of the tales of other women who also dealt with issues surrounding their fathers, and how the loss of their fathers may have affected them in positive and / or negative ways. The inclusion of all of these other stories makes this a far richer and more interesting book than if it were only about the life of the author. In fact, I can see this book being used as a textbook in college sociology courses on family values. It is that good! ... Here is an example of one insight she shares with us, from pages 64 and 65: "Indeed, the best indication of how we will grieve and recover from our loss may not lie in how our fathers die, but in how we dealt with them living. And for those of us who were unable to make peace with our fathers during their lifetimes, our way to peace and to healing may lie in accepting this lack of resolution, accepting our own and our fathers' flaws. Even if our fathers cannot at this final crisis abandon their illusions about their role, and our relationship, we must. For only by letting go of the fantasy of the perfect daddy, and of the perfect deathbed reconciliation, can we achieve anything resembling closure." ... How intuitively profound! ... You know, I picked up this book in order to help me better understand people who are close to me who have lost their fathers at an early age, in order to be more sympathetic toward them and more considerate of their feelings and experiences. I was well rewarded, for, not only did I gain a greater understanding of the feelings of the loss of one's father from the perspective of a daughter, I also learned that many of these emotions are shared by ALL of us. Ultimately, we ALL have to one day face the inevitable loss of BOTH our parents - our fathers AND our mothers. Reading this book, somehow, makes that inevitable, one-day reality just a bit easier to accept and understand. It's a great comfort to the soul. ... BRAVO, Clea Simon! ... YOWZA! - The Aeolian Kid
Rating:
Summary: Honesty
Review: As I began to read the introduction to this amazing book, it was as if I were dictating and Clea was simply putting the words on paper. Although our Father's were educated in different ways, the grief of a slow death is much different. My Father's illness lasted for six years and I felt like he died a million times before the actual death. Clea has taken an uncomfortable reality and placed it on a page for confirmation and viewing by all who have suffered the loss of our greatest Love as daughters. This is an amazing find!!!
Rating:
Summary: I identified with this book
Review: I also lost my Dad. He was my everything. A Daddy's girl I always wanted to please him. Now my achievements have lost a little lustre because I don't have him to share them with. In memory of my Dad I wrote Write from Your Heart, A Healing Grief Journal, After the Tears, A Gentle Guide to Help Children Understand Death (video) and a soon to be released book, Healing Stories of Grief and Faith. His death changed my life. His life changed my world. I love him, miss him and praise God I had him for a while.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply felt and beautifully written
Review: I heard an interview with Clea Simon on a public radio show, and having lived through the loss of a close relative myself, I invested in her book. I found it to be a comforting and perceptive book, with many interviews that shed light on the possibility of living through loss and getting beyond it. Simon is generous with her own reflections, and her writing is lovely. I will be recommending this book to my friends.
Rating: 
Summary: This author needs a therapist, not a book contract
Review: I tried to read this book after the death of my Dad due to a long battle with cancer. This author can only "help" or more accurately share stories of how dysfunctional her relationship with her father was, and how promiscuous she was, what a bad friend she was to those around her, rather than actually tell you anything about what life is like after the death of a father that you had a healthy relationship with. If you are normal and your father is normal, and you were friends with your father, this book is not for you. If you need therapy and your Dad needs therapy, here is clearly the book for you.
This book is full of sweeping generalizations to validate the author's bad decisions in the relationships in her life. It is not backed up with any research or facts of any kind. She should have bought a journal and written about the bad relationship in private rather than publish it. Please do not buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written--and full of hope
Review: I was in London on vacation and happened to see a write-up on this book in one of the tabloids! It sounded so great that as soon as I got back to the States, I picked up a copy. Simon is a fabulous writer and this is a truly important book.
Rating:
Summary: This is a good book..
Review: My father died almost a year ago and I bought this book in October 2004. I'm still having a hard time reading it; not because it's not easy reading, but because of the depth of emotion it conjures up as it pushes me to reflect on the relationship between me and my dad. No matter how old I get, I will always miss him and wish I could have stayed young and he could've lived forever. I think when I get to the end of this book, I will have gone through more healing through my grief. It's that kind of book..
Rating: 
Summary: Needed some insight
Review: Since I lost my dad almost 10 years ago, I felt it was a book I needed to read. I still have a lot of unresolved issues surrounding my father's death and it has impacted me in a very negative way. I thought this book would provide me some insight into why I am still having problems with my dad's death. I related to some of the book, but not all of it. The author's circumstances were very different from mine but she does include interviews with many other women, some of whom I could relate to and some that I couldn't. I am not really sure if it has given me the additional insight I had hoped for but it a well researched and well written book and is worth reading. It seemed more of a personal journal of the author's life and her father's death rather than a psychological study of how our fathers' death affects us, but I am glad I read it anyway.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Aid in Dealing with the Death of Your Father
Review: This book is really outstanding. I recommend it to anyone who has just lost their father or for someone who has not gotten a handle on their loss however long ago it was. Clea Simon writes as though she is speaking directly to you. She tells her own painful story and comforts her reader in doing so. Ms.Simon tells of many other women's experiences of losing their fathers so the reader gets many different perspectives on father/daughter relationships and how these daughters dealt with losing their fathers. Fatherless Women, for me, chronicled all the feelings I had felt, did feel and would feel during the grieving process. I was very comforted by this book. It made me feel I was part of a group so I stopped feeling so alone and isolated. It made me familiar with my feelings so I could give a name to what I am/was going through. Her book is an easy to read, informative, reassuring and very personable account of one of the most difficult things women go through. I would not have been able to begin my healing without this book. I thank you from the depths of my soul, Clea Simon.
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