The Father-Daughter Dance

Most of Jo Hamya’s new novel, The Hypocrite, takes place during a single matinee performance of a play in the semi-locked-down London of August 2020. The playwright, Sophia, is in her late twenties. Her play is a success. While the show runs, she eats lunch at the theater’s rooftop restaurant with her increasingly drunk mother. The special occasion is what’s happening downstairs, where Sophia’s father, a famous British novelist, settles into the audience. When it begins, he discovers that his daughter’s play is about him. Its portrait, particularly of his views about and behavior toward women, is not kind.