The Vet's Daughter

by Barbara Comyns

Book Overview

The Vet's Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge. The vet lives with his bedridden wife and shy daughter Alice in a sinister London suburb. He works constantly, captive to a strange private fury, and treats his family with brutality and contempt. After his wife's death, the vet takes up with a crass, needling woman who tries to refashion Alice in her own image. And yet as Alice retreats ever deeper into a dream world, she discovers...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590170296
• ISBN13: 9781590170298
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

An Immortal Book

Every sentence of this book startles, as if written by a person who understood language differently and better than other writers. It is a very short novel and an astounding one, a remarkable trip into the consciousness of a young girl who is subtly estranged from the world around her. Comyns writes in her own tradition, but she bears a sure relation to Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and Penelope Fitzgerald, whose devotees will certainly love this book.