She Treads Softly: Dad, Love, Me

Monday, June 29, 2026

Dad, Love, Me

Dad, Love, Me by Matthew Quick
7/21/26; 320 pages
Avid Reader Press/S&S

Dad, Love, Me by Matthew Quick is a heartbreaking, honest, and very highly recommended memoir about the troubling and disparaging relationship with his father, Mike, who now suffers from dementia. In the opening he writes, "I trust your soul to know what to do with my memoir." As a reader, I thank him for his courage, vulnerability, and honesty. I have been looking forward to reading this for months.

This memoir is an exceptionally well-written, emotionally honest account that is both brave and inspiring as Quick shares his memories and feelings being raised by a father who never really knew how to show love and encouragement. The unwavering support of his wife is ever present. Quick also found other supportive men who play a key role in his life. Those reading Quick's Substack know he has been struggling with writing this candid account of his fraught relationship with his father and his own recovery and participation in Jungian therapy. As his father slips further into dementia, Quick has been there to help both his father and mother. This has helped him find a connection and closure.

The chapters move back and forth in time while exploring his relationship with his father and his own struggles with drinking, anxiety, and writer's block. This is a very effective presentation as it mimics memories and thoughts being suddenly recalled during current events. Some chapters are to his father, recounting how demoralizing, cold, and cruel he was. Other chapters offer insight into the Zoom-based Jungian analysis he undertakes with a man he calls Zeus. Then there are the chapters recounting events in more recent times as his father's dementia takes hold.

What sets this memoir above and beyond others is the honesty about both memories and personal struggles. Quick hopes his account will help other men deal with the fraught relationships with their fathers and find healing, closure, and forgiveness, but others can also find healing. Honestly, many families can be difficult. There were several poignant passages I highlighted. One referred to advice he was given that the suffering he was experiencing was actually a gift from God. Quick needed to realize that everything good in his life was there because God allowed it to be there. In another impactful passage he recounted advice that he didn't have to tolerate being infected by his father's words. He could liberate himself, a very worthwhile concept to consider.

Dad, Love, Me is an excellence choice for those who appreciate memoirs, struggle with relationships due to fathers (or family members), and are seeking healing. Truly, everything about this memoir is outstanding, poignant, and deeply moving. Thanks to Avid Reader Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.