I Will Do Better by Charles Bock

subtitled A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love.

Perhaps my most popular and controversial review over on Goodreads is of an absolutely abysmal “parenting” memoir by a blogger who lost his wife in childbirth and struggled to raise their child on his own afterwards. I have genuine sympathy for his situation — with my co-parent overseas for weeks at a time, my experiences single parenting our three youngsters have been tough to miserable — but the prose is atrocious and the absolute lack of self-reflection worse. So when I started this book, I had an immediate flash of “oh no, are we going to go through that bullshit again?”

Readers, to my relief and hopefully yours, we are not.

Which isn’t to say that our author here, the novelist Charles Bock, is perfect. There are points in this memoir where I found this grown-ass man to be deeply and unnecessarily self-centered and irritating. But crucially as he’s writing about his past experiences, he recognizes that he really sucked during those less than stellar moments he’s describing. Most importantly, and as stated in the title and echoed like a refrain in the text, he affirms that he “will do better” and strives to follow through, for the sake of himself but mostly for the sake of the little girl who depends on him for everything.

Lucy Bock was almost three years old when her mother Diana died of cancer. In an effort to cheer her up on her first birthday without her mom, Charles ends up putting himself in the hospital. It’s a disastrous start to single parenthood but Charles resolves to keep trying, to keep doing better. Plenty of mistakes are made along the way, but he’s only human. And unlike some other oblivious parents, he knows when he’s messing up, knows when he’s being petty and selfish and unreasonable. He’s not a natural dad, admitting his thorough ambivalence to parenthood from the start, but he keeps choosing love, even when it’s hard and he’s ill-equipped to either give or receive it.

There’s a lot of self-owning here — the two-girlfriend situation is clearly the acting out of someone late to young adult drama, while the weird bargaining with both Lily and another exasperated parent when Lily refuses to give an acquaintance’s hairclip back is neediness presenting itself as permissive parenting — but Mr Bock doesn’t tell us these things to have us feel sorry for him or, worse, absolve him of his immaturity. Instead, he exposes the painful truth about himself to show that it’s possible to fuck up, and then to learn from it and become both a better father and person. There’s a particularly evocative passage near the end of the book, where he’s considering punching out a guy during the blackout that came on the heels of Hurricane Sandy. I was so worried that he was going to do something stupid, but reading his in-the-moment evaluation of all the repercussions that would come if he allowed himself to lose his temper finally assured me: he’s going to be okay. The Charles in the memoir is embracing maturity and accepting responsibility for his actions and learning how to be a good human being, one day at a time.

And so, ten years on (for writing the memoir, plus a few years for getting it polished and published,) he’s raised a child he’s proud of, and is deeply grateful for all the help he’s received along the way. Life hasn’t turned out the way he’s expected but he’s navigated the journey the best he can, accepting the existence of his negative feelings but refusing to wallow, and always, ALWAYS thoughtfully seeking to improve. That’s honestly a lot to be proud of, and an excellent lesson to share with other people and parents — and especially dads — who are going through what he did and/or want to know how he managed.

I Will Do Better by Charles Bock was published October 1 2024 by Abrams Press and is available from all good booksellers, including