This book was not, for the members of his family, an undiluted pleasure. Set in 1890s New York, Clarence Day's wonderful comic tales of his father, Clarence "Clare" Day Senior, portray a rambunctious, short-fused Wall Street broker who demands that everything from his family (and other menials) should be just so. When it isn't, all hell breaks loose and an amusing sight it is too from a safe enough distance. Clare is intolerant and tyrannical in his constant battle to harness the world to his way of thinking. He rages against his wife, his cook, his horse, shopkeepers, servants and, of course, his children and their inability to live up to his impossible standards. Yet, the more he blusters and rails, the more comic a figure he cuts. Clarence Day's Life with Father, originally serialized in the New Yorker, is a timeless classic of American humor.
Did you find this review helpful?