The Guncle by Steven Rowley

Patrick used to be a sit-com star, until his partner, Joseph, got killed in an accident and Patrick secluded himself in a large house in remote Palm Springs. Then his sister-in-law, who was also his best friend in college, dies after a battle with cancer and Patrick races off to Connecticut for her funeral.  After the funeral his newly widowed brother, Greg, asks if Patrick will take care of his two kids, Maisie, age 10, and Grant, age 6, while Greg goes to rehab to get over a prescription drug addiction. Over the course of the summer, Patrick bonds with the children and, in very unconventional ways, helps them grieve for their mother.  Meanwhile Patrick has to face his own grief over Joseph and learn to reclaim life. 

I read this book because a picture book call My Guncle and Me by Jonathan Merritt has been officially challenged at my library.  I know this book is by a different author, but I thought the challenger might be uncomfortable about that book because she was familiar with this book. I had mixed feelings about this book.  The writing is great and all the characters are really endearing.  There are funny scenes and really heartwarming scenes where Patrick and the kids interact with each other.  The book is successful in showing how having kids in your life changes your outlook in the world but also how children are real people who have real emotions that need to be acknowledged and understood. However, the book portrays the children in situations that the white-straight-conservative-mother in me cringes at.  Patrick drinks alcohol incessantly throughout the book, swears frequently, and goes skinny dipping and has sexual encounters with a much younger TV star with the children in the house. This doesn't seem like an appropriate environment for kids to me. The author represents this opinion using a character in the book, Patrick's sister Clara. Clara is an active feminist who rants about white male privilege, but secretly is harboring a personal tragedy that is manifesting itself in her prudishness. I kind of resented the fact that the author seems to be suggesting that if you are worried about the kids being in the environment of profanity, alcohol, and sex, you are a deeply troubled man-hater. Still, if I am honest, I enjoyed the book overall, though it felt a little like a guilty pleasure. (2021, 336 p)