Like father like daughter

As much as Alison despises her father, I can't help but to realize how similar she is to him. She seems to discover more and more about her father’s secrets in chapter three. Her mother reveals to her events that had taken place even before she was born, which helps her as well as the reader to better understand why her father is the way he is.
Once Alison wrote a letter home four months prior to her father’s death about "coming out", her mother admitted that her father too was homosexual or, bisexual and that he had had affairs with men while they were married. This came as a surprise to Alison, but also helped her to put the pieces together. Her and her father both communicated via letters because it was much easier than showing emotion in person; another similarity they have. Throughout the book, he had always been infatuated with certain books that had homosexuality hidden in the pages (or how he perceived these books). Such as The Great Gatsby he always talked so dearly about the male author. Like her father, Alison took pleasure in reading books about homosexuality. In college she was in the library almost every day understanding more and more that homosexuality wasn't just about physicality, but about the mentality. "My realization at nineteen that I was a lesbian came about in a manner consistent with my bookish upbringing. A revelation not of the flesh, but of the mind."
These thoughts lead her to believe that her father was never really physically interested in her mother, but just the idea of having a "normal" life. Even so, their lives never really turned out the way they had imagined. "I speculate on what attracted my father more--the role, the actress, or my mother herself." Although Alison refuses to believe that she is anything like her heartless father, she is subliminally playing out her father’s life.