Who is Dad from The Silver Kiss and what is their importance?

Harry Sutcliff is father to Zoe Sutcliff and husband to Ann Sutcliff, who is currently in hospital at the start of the novel suffering from what is probably terminal cancer. Harry is presented as a workaholic, a distant ghost of a man who seems good natured and caring but die to the extreme events is unable to show it to his daughter through the first half of the book.

Harry himself, as a character goes through some character development as he learns to express his feelings better to his daughter, and to listen to her concerns, but is many ways also a minor character in the book when compared to Zoe or Simon.

Harry Sutcliff is often known through his absence in the narrative, by a hasty phone call to his daughter Zoe, a note, or on one occasion, Zoe finding him collapsed asleep fully clothed on his bed. We are shown to see that he is a man who is deeply worried and troubled by the events happening to his wife, and who is working extra hard at his office to compensate for the troubles that their family is going through. It is only when after Zoe explodes and has an argument with him, that his wife Anne talks to him discretely and Lorraine stays at their house that the combination of all three cause him to start top 'come alive again.' Through his character, we can see some of the damaging effects of loss, and how it can cause psychic walls to be thrown up around the individual to prevent themselves from feeling further pain. Towards the end of the book he decides to go to family counselling for those with family members in terminal care, and it is this decision which allows him to forge a new relationship with his daughter (and we presume, his wife).