Book Review: Songs of My Father and Other Essays

Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

This uncomfortably entertaining collection of autobiographical essays will either make you cringe with recognition or thank God this wasn’t your family.

For Fred Landry, patriarch of the Landry family, the limelight shines only for him. The party starts when he walks in. The idea of the world revolving without him at the center is reprehensible. For his family, this trait of toxic histrionic narcissism eats away at them at an almost imperceptible rate. A man who will use family outings, formal dinners, church, and even funerals to garner an audience may seem laughable, if it weren’t so humiliatingly regular.

As Gardner Landry grows up, he recognizes the deep flaws in his self-absorbed father and passive mother. Where other families may have cute anecdotes, his are laced with embarrassment and distress. This collection of essays is an in-depth unpacking of the dynamics that ruled Landry’s formative years. It shows Fred in all his dubious glory: his vanities, proclivities, and obsessions.

Songs of My Father and Other Essays is a collection of autobiographical essays that has a kind of raw urgency about it. A person is unpacking their intergenerational trauma brought on by living a life with a narcissist father. Landry himself says that the essays are reactive, and it is also very clear on reading them. The essays on Landry’s father feel like someone prodding a sore spot with an exploratory finger. Careful, careful, not too hard. Like the author is worried about breaking the skin and having all the pain of the past pour in.

Despite the heavy theme, Songs of My Father is a light, playful look at a life that often likely was anything but. It recognizes the absurdities, the awkwardness, and the genuine humor, albeit bizarre, that crops up when the most powerful personality in the family is on the look out for his next audience, his next one-man-show. It also delves into the genuinely absurd behaviors that can arise when a man’s obsessions get out of hand.

While the essays in Songs of My Father paint a vivid picture of Fred, the writing style, word choices, and even essay topics work hard to put space between Landry and his father. I’d go so far as to suggest that the goal is to put space between Landry and his past. The playfulness is refreshing coming from a place where dark trauma autobiographies are so prolific, but it is also a powerful buffer. If things can be kept light, the past won’t feel quite so powerful. Choosing to use Fred’s name throughout rather than dad or my father, distances the author from the narrative even further. Makes the history into a story. The author’s emotional range isn’t explored within these pages. We’re reading from the vantage point of someone exploring a collection of personality disorders, not from the viewpoint of a person who has been harmed by someone with those personality disorders. 

Light and humorous on the surface, there is a wealth of unpacked trauma bubbling beneath Songs of My Father—the kind of collection that will make readers cringe with recognition.

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