I Will Do Better: A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love

Novelist Bock (Alice & Oliver) offers an unvarnished account of raising his daughter, Lily, after his wife, Diana, died of leukemia. Days before Lily’s third birthday party, a very ill Diana died, confusing Lily and making Bock, then 42, panic about the future. Overcome by grief, with “no full-time job, no investments, no retirement account, barely a pot to piss in,” he considered sending Lily to live with Diana’s family in Tennessee but decided against it, choosing instead to tackle childcare, preschool, and Lily’s tempestuous emotions by himself. With dry humor, Bock recounts the pitfalls (“The male’s capacity to feel sorry for himself is bottomless”), including his failed attempts to ignite new romances and an accident in which he broke his elbow when Lily was a toddler. He’s bracingly honest about his flaws, sharing his therapist’s observation that he “spent a considerable amount of [his] adult history avoiding responsibility,” but the self-incrimination is offset with tender recollections of his and Diana’s courtship and his palpable love for Lily, who, by 13, is “radioactive hell on wheels... in the best way.” Single parents will find much to identify with in this warts-and-all account. Agent: Barbara Jones, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (Oct.)