The Truth About Unringing Phones: Essays on Yearning is an exploration of responsibility and culpability told in experimental and fragmented essays. When she was four years old Lara's father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket. When he did turn his attention on her, sometimes his gaze lingered inappropriately. Clothing and personal boundaries were optional in his overtly sexual household. As Lillibridge aged, her adoration of her father and longing for him was layered over with anger, revulsion, and later pity like a hand-dipped candle, these new emotions fusing with, but not replacing the always present yearning. Now that her father is in his eighties, dementia comes and goes and stays longer each time. He is a lonely old man and while society says Lillibridge should be a dutiful daughter, the only way she has survived her father was to cut herself off from him, having only the most superficial of interactions. In this collection she grapples with responsibility versus self-preservation.
