All Those Things We Never Said - Mark Levy Follows the Trouble Relationship between a Father and a Daughter

What would you do to hold again someone who has left you for good? Where would you go to reconnect with your father, whom you have missed all of your life? Do you need this katarsis - all the things you wanted yo say but you never did because you were too proud, too hurt, or because you felt you still had the time? And when once of a sudden this person is no longer alive, would you take the chance of spending one more week with him just to hear his explanations and excuses?

Julia, a 30-something years old woman faces these questions on a very important day - her wedding day. All of her life she didn't have a father - he was the always busy and successful businessman. She saw him only in between his business trips and she always felt his absence. Years later they lost touch but Julia expects him now to take her down the aisle to her future husband. However, her father still finds a way to ruin her celebration. He dies several days before her wedding and his funeral is on the worst possible day- Julia's wedding. Is it a mere coincidence or is her father trying to change her life once again?

Devastated, Julia doesn't know how to react. She doesn't cry but she feels the emptiness of losing her father. Until she finds a strange box in her living room. Her rich father has found a way to spend six more days with her and to tell her all those things he was too busy to tell before. Of course, only if Julia wants to listen. If not, she can easily turn him off and send him back. No, he didn't send her tapes; he send himself in the form of a high-tech android, who astonishingly resembles, talks, and behaves like the original. Julia is faced with a difficult choice - should she allow the robot to fill the void left by her father all those years or should she just reject it and continue with her life. Julia's decision takes her on a tender and unforgettable journey through Canada, Paris, and Berlin. As she gets to know her father once again she learns more about his mistakes in the past, his feelings towards her mother, and his love for his daughter. Along with that, Julia discovers a secret her father has kept for nearly 20 years; a secret connected to the love of her life, the German Tomas, whom she taught to be dead.

Is Julia brave enough to go after her teenage love? Most importantly, is her father's sudden death a few days before her wedding a sign that she shouldn't marry Adam, her boring, but gentle and secure fiancee? And what is the role of Julia's father in all of this? Mark Levy takes us through the story of two different generations and how they choices affected their actions. The author elaborates on the extremely difficult relationship between father and child, still showing that it is never too late to try to understand, to ask for forgiveness, and to receive it. It is also never too late to find the one love, whom you have been missing for 20 years.

This is a tender fantastical novel, which will move you and prompt you to think about your own relationship with your parents. Sometimes they do what they perceive to be beneficial to their child and often subconsciously make mistakes. Children, on the other hand, blame their parents for these mistakes and for their failures and exclude them from their lives. But all our parents want is for us to be safe and happy. They don't find the right means of communication and as Julia father says: "I wanted to be your friend, your accomplice, your trustee, but I was only your father and I will remain your father forever".

And the ending...well the ending is unbelievable. Levy shows the extreme actions, which a father will undertake to help his daughter make the right choices. Because no matter how we feel at times, all our parents want is to see us happy. Julia's father is a definite example of that, and safe to say, the girl understood and forgave. As we all should do. Since there are miracles in the world and all one should do is open his/her eyes and see them.