The son continues to struggle to establish a consistent identity for his father, and seems to regret the fame that the letter has brought to him after death. He says, "I see that that is what I want this afternoon magnetized by the mail, detoured around class, food, new people, that he be a mere inhabitant of earth." In death, his father has become a symbol that transcends his son's memories.

BUT as the boy comes closer to understanding his father, he draws closer to his other family members as well. His mother is a constant but reticent presence throughout the book. Her character is sadly underdveloped, but the boy hints at the influence she has in his life, and at the important role that he, an only child, plays in hers.

At the same time, however, the letter becomes a wall separating the boy from his mother. It is a gift that has been given him to unravel, and McElroy suggests that the boy cannot freely interact with others until he unravels the letter's past as well as its future.

The novel is an enveloping glimpse into the soul of a teenaged boy baffled by the effects of death on his mind and world. McElroy's drifting, almost careless stream of consciousness adds credence to his hero's words. The reader is drawn into the boy's mind, and follows his leaps from bemusement to reminiscence to stark realization of death's actuality. What began as an elegy for the father develops into a journal documenting the son's progression into maturity even as the letter progresses into wider and wider circles of society.

McElroy's achievement is to move beyond elegy, which is the conventiopnal stance of books about the death of loved ones. Just as the letter ends up by cerating a distance between the boy and his father, as written words are want to do, so too an elegaic novel would only add to that distance.

The boy must come to terms with his father, and himself; he must, in short, learn to grow up, a process which lies at the heart of any father-son relationship. That process, perhaps more painful and certainly less conventionally eloquent than simple elegy, enables one to cope with the death of a parent, McElroy suggests. It also forms the basis for a well-crafted and instructive novel.