We have met Roland Marks before. Phillip Roth wrote about a character just like him in "Exit Ghost." Self absorbed. Serial womanizer because he places his needs and vanity above the needs and welfare of his family. Seeking the attention of younger and younger women as he diminishes both physically and artistically and struggles with his increasing irrelevance.

The difference here is that the perspective is not of the aging literary lion---which tends to create sympathy for him. This beautifully written novella tells the story from the point of view of his daughter. The dutiful daughter that one may say lacked the sense to move on and away from the selfish life devouring presence of her famous father. We see him in all his selfishness, his aggression used to mask his insecurities, and his overwhelming and all encompassing ego.

Good books sometimes not only make you think about what you have read, but make you re-evaluate other books that you have read. Patricide is just such a book. Told with the chilling understatement of a master. ( )

A lovely, compact novel, closely focused. Rather like an extended short story. "Lou-Lou" is the narrator, the daughter of a great writer. He rarely offers her any praise for her part in his life, even though all of his wives and his other children have abandoned him to his self-centered ways. Roland Marks, the writer, is now in his seventies and is working with his daughter to sell his massive archive to the New York Public Library. He is hoping for a large sum from the sale, not least because of the money that has been draining from his coffers for his ex-wives.

Two of his wives went beyond alimony to sue him for their part in some of his books. They stated that they helped him write the books or provided the characters. The charges were spurious but judges are usually not literary critics and often do not identify with self-important writers.

Lou holds down a professorship and is dean of a department at a small college not far from her father's house, so that she can visit him when needed. At the least, she visits once a week and they have take-out food together. She also takes care of some of his bills and helps get repairs made to the old house. She sacrificed a better position elsewhere for this closeness. And then entered the graduate student.

Cameron was an attractive young woman, in her twenties, doing her thesis on the great man. She had asked Roland Marks if she could interview him. Normally Marks resisted extending such interviews, but in this case he lets Cameron into his life more and more, until the two are taking trips to various functions together. For her part, Cameron appears to be genuinely interested in Marks and is unfailingly kind to Lou.

While she is secretly seething inside, Lou maintains a friendly attitude toward this woman who could very well become Marks' sixth wife. If she does, chances are that Lou's title as literary executor of Roland Marks' estate would likely fall to Cameron instead, a clearly unfair situation. Lou frets over it, and frets especially over the fact that she is being excluded from her father's life more and more as time goes on. She does, however, "check on" the house, as requested by Marks, when the couple are away, and arranges for a contractor to come to repair the back stairs that extend to the beach. She has tried to get her father to stop using the stairs because they are so damaged, but he persists, laughs at her worries, and somehow the stairs do seem to hold him all right.

Perhaps I have said too much already! A final note: Lou admits to herself that if she met Cameron in another setting she would like her. She can't really find fault with her, other than her effect on her father. How it all ends is, for me, the best part. ( )

Not her best. A daughter seems obsessed with her famous writer father. She devotes her life to him; is jealous of his girlfriends. Father dies falling down stairs which she neglected to repair. Perhaps hoping for father to die? ( )