Working For Love Author:Tessa Dahl For all the women who have ever loved too much, Tessa Dahl's brilliant debut novel is a story of innocence prolonged, painful discovery and courageous growth as one woman stages a fierce battle for independence from the men she has struggled for too long to please. — From Publishers Weekly: — Described as "semi-autobiographical," this debut novel ... more »by the daughter of actress Patricia Neal and writer Roald Dahl seems more factual than fictional, recapitulating as it does the three tragedies that struck the Dahl family in stunning succession. More importantly, though, it reveals the author as a capable writer with a strong, distinctive voice. In short, intense, alternating chapters that are a cri de coeur, narrator/protagonist Molly tells of her efforts to please her dominating, manipulative husband, and, in flashbacks, recalls her earlier efforts to win love from her equally cold, controlling father. The tragic events she recalls the accident that left her brother brain-damaged, the sudden death of her adored sister, her mother's stroke are played out against Molly's attempts to become important in her parents' eyes and, later, to deflect her husband's cruelty. Her accusations against Jack, a marital monster extraordinaire, unfortunately become a diatribe, a crescendo of outrage and pain. Molly's agonizing journey to self-confidence is more credible than her continuing, obsessive need for her father's approval; at the end of the novel, she still calls him "that giant of a man, my love, my life." Surprisingly, in view of the bitterness Dahl expresses, the book's dedication reads: "To my father."« less