Dear Prudence,
I’m a writer and have published three novels in the last 10 years. Two have becameNew York Times best-sellers and have been translated into numerous foreign languages. My father, who always fancied himself an aspiring novelist even though he never tried to get anything published, hasn’t read any of my books or ever congratulated me. When my books have come up in family conversation, he turns the discussion to his own unpublished novel. Last month, at age 70, he finally paid a vanity press thousands of dollars to publish it. It’s 500 pages of clichés and repetition, wrapped around an overstuffed plot. My father wants to know what I think of his book, and he also wants me to promote it to my social media following, which is large. But the thought of doing either makes me resentful to an extent that I haven’t felt in years. My father has some personality issues that make direct confrontations deeply unpleasant and unproductive, and a flat refusal would likely become a family kerfuffle and end up putting my mother in the middle. How do I get out of this without inflicting unnecessary pain on my family or myself?