The cover of What Is Left the Daughter looks so grim. But what made it stand out for me was its unrelenting and extremely dry humor that runs through all the eerily coincidental tragedies that occur. The narrator, Wyatt Hillyer, writes this as a long letter to his daughter. Their relationship is slowly revealed as he tells the story that begins with the suicides of his mother and father, who killed themselves in different locations on the same day. Their suicides were due, it seems, to their love of the same woman. The newly-orphaned 17-year-old Wyatt goes to live with his aunt, uncle, and their adopted daughter Tilda in small town Middle Economy on the Bay of Fundy. Here, he falls in love with his cousin as she falls in love with a German exchange student. Meanwhile, World War II is being fought, and Tilda’s father becomes obsessed with tracking the threat of German u-boats that prowl Nova Scotia’s ports.
Through the first half of the book, Wyatt details the slight occurrences of a few years and reproduces the wry conversations between he, his new family, and the sarcastic local baker. An explosion of events sends all the characters reeling. Wyatt’s dryness and reserve colors the book and his relationships. It’s clear that he’s tragically economical with himself and his emotions, but this quiescence also puts a lot of calmness and power into the story he tells.
