Black’s sad and gripping new novel is an example of how fiction is not just a form of literature but a place. We go there for lessons on how to live, how to change and, most important, how to forgive and seek forgiveness ... Don’t Cry for Me rides the rickety line between tragedy and melodrama. But despite its sentimental risks — it features an obsessive, cloying focus on family meals...for example, and repeats the assertion that simply telling the story or getting it off one’s chest will make a difference — a theme emerges: Don’t Cry for Me is a novel about novels, a story about stories.
Considering that it’s about a dying man, Don’t Cry for Me by Daniel Black is incredibly alive. The novel’s simple format—letters that offer decades of retrospection—makes for incredible storytelling, and readers will be invested from page one ... An accomplished author of six previous novels, Black has crafted a memorable, poignant story that explores themes of regret, legacy and family—and yet remains perfectly balanced through it all.
