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The Vet's Daughter
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 an extraordinary secret power of her own.
Harrowing and haunting, like an unexpected cross between Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King, The Vet’s Daughter is a story of outraged innocence that culminates in a scene of appalling triumph.
Harrowing and haunting, like an unexpected cross between Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King, The Vet’s Daughter is a story of outraged innocence that culminates in a scene of appalling triumph.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
About the author
Barbara Comyns
11 books273 followersBarbara Comyns was educated mainly by governesses until she went to art schools in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. Her father was a semi-retired managing director of a Midland chemical firm. She was one of six children and they lived in a house on the banks of the Avon in Warwickshire. She started writing fiction at the age of ten and her first novel, Sisters by a River, was published in 1947. She also worked in an advertising agency, a typewriting bureau, dealt in old cars and antique furniture, bred poodles, converted and let flats, and exhibited pictures in The London Group. She first married in 1931, to an artist, and for the second time in 1945. With her second husband she lived in Spain for eighteen years.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 450 reviews
June 3, 2021
Well. This one knocked my socks right off.
Right from the beginning I knew I was reading something unique - eccentric, really. This whole book is delightfully eccentric. Something weirdly wonderful.
After reading the foreword written by the author herself, I knew it was penned by an eccentric too. In the early 1950s, Barbara Comyns, a single mother of two small children, paid the bills by selling antique cars. Just think about that, if you will! And she wrote The Vet's Daughter between the hours of 5 and 7 every morning, the only time she had to herself. (This sounds very familiar - that's when I do all my writing, too.)
As I was saying, from the first paragraph of this wee novel, I was blown away by the narrative voice of Alice, whose father is a bullying bastard of a veterinarian. Alice has an innocent, childlike voice, but one that is vividly reliable in her observations of the world around her, which includes the most dark and cruel. Some examples:
Lucy's hair fell down her back like water from a tap, very straight and long. Mine was like a pale yellow bell.
(My mother) just stood there. Her bones were small and her shoulders sloped; her teeth were not straight either; so, if she had been a dog, my father would have destroyed her.
It's no surprise to me that Graham Greene wrote the blurb on the back of this book. Barbara Comyns is absolutely remarkable. She's one of those authors who has faded into undeserved obscurity.
This gothic amuse-bouche is told by Alice, who despite being under the thumb of her oppressive father, is dreamy and hopeful and has romantic ideas of finding a man to open doors for her. But her world is dreary and lonely, and her prospects are less than promising. Danger and tragedy seem to be just around the corner.
I found myself thinking about We Always Lived in the Castle, when Alice finds herself with a half mad woman living in a half burnt down house, and horrible servants lurking around. I even found myself thinking about Carrie when Alice discovers occult-ish powers of her own that allow her to temporarily rise above her dire circumstances.
But mainly I marvelled at how, through Alice's quirky narration, I was not only able to read a story this dark and tinged with violence (to people and animals, throughout), but get right up close. Through her masterful mix of the quaint and nightmarish, I could smell the chloroform. I could hear the parrot squawking. I could lay my head against the rug made from the skin of a Great Dane. Mmmmm.
A deeply crafted, brutal fairy tale I won't soon forget. Brilliant.
Right from the beginning I knew I was reading something unique - eccentric, really. This whole book is delightfully eccentric. Something weirdly wonderful.
After reading the foreword written by the author herself, I knew it was penned by an eccentric too. In the early 1950s, Barbara Comyns, a single mother of two small children, paid the bills by selling antique cars. Just think about that, if you will! And she wrote The Vet's Daughter between the hours of 5 and 7 every morning, the only time she had to herself. (This sounds very familiar - that's when I do all my writing, too.)
As I was saying, from the first paragraph of this wee novel, I was blown away by the narrative voice of Alice, whose father is a bullying bastard of a veterinarian. Alice has an innocent, childlike voice, but one that is vividly reliable in her observations of the world around her, which includes the most dark and cruel. Some examples:
Lucy's hair fell down her back like water from a tap, very straight and long. Mine was like a pale yellow bell.
(My mother) just stood there. Her bones were small and her shoulders sloped; her teeth were not straight either; so, if she had been a dog, my father would have destroyed her.
It's no surprise to me that Graham Greene wrote the blurb on the back of this book. Barbara Comyns is absolutely remarkable. She's one of those authors who has faded into undeserved obscurity.
This gothic amuse-bouche is told by Alice, who despite being under the thumb of her oppressive father, is dreamy and hopeful and has romantic ideas of finding a man to open doors for her. But her world is dreary and lonely, and her prospects are less than promising. Danger and tragedy seem to be just around the corner.
I found myself thinking about We Always Lived in the Castle, when Alice finds herself with a half mad woman living in a half burnt down house, and horrible servants lurking around. I even found myself thinking about Carrie when Alice discovers occult-ish powers of her own that allow her to temporarily rise above her dire circumstances.
But mainly I marvelled at how, through Alice's quirky narration, I was not only able to read a story this dark and tinged with violence (to people and animals, throughout), but get right up close. Through her masterful mix of the quaint and nightmarish, I could smell the chloroform. I could hear the parrot squawking. I could lay my head against the rug made from the skin of a Great Dane. Mmmmm.
A deeply crafted, brutal fairy tale I won't soon forget. Brilliant.
October 30, 2016
I think Barbara Comyns is something of a neglected genius, her novels are rather odd and this is the second one I have read. The Juniper Tree was based on a fairy tale and wove magic realism into social comment and the macabre.
This novel is written from the point of view of Alice Rowlands, daughter of a Vet living in South London. Her father is brutal and cruel to Alice and her mother. Following her mother’s death he brings a rather brash girlfriend into the house. Alice is effectively a servant. She has few friends but is courted by Henry Peebles (known as Blinkers), who is kind to her. Alice moves to the coast to become housekeeper to Blinkers’ mother. Here she has a brief flirtation with a sailor. Strange things start to happen to Alice; she has to return to London and the oddness continues. To say more would give things away. This isn’t a ghost story; much earlier (written in 1959) it still has an element of magic realism, but could also be described as suburban gothic. Being set at a vets there are also plenty of animals and a rather creepy vivisectionist who visits to collect puppies.
Comyns came up with the idea for this novel from a dream she had whilst staying in a cottage owned by Kim Philby (a friend of her husband’s). In the early 1930s she had been part of the bohemian scene in London, mixi ng with Dylan Thomas, Augustus John and others.
Comyns is a unique writer; some of the grotesque are almost comic and many of the tragic scenes also have a comic element. Although there is fary tale and enchantment here; the theme is really concerning an evil; the treatment of Edwardian daughters and wives going on behind respectable front doors. Alice’s mother is entirely trapped with not a hope of escape and she withers away before Alice’s eyes. Alice is a tragic figure, innocent in a predatory world. The writing is clear and precise and the descriptions are excellent. Her characters are well drawn; even the monstrous ones, like Alice’s father are all too human.
There are some unusual and deft touches; the undertaker arriving to measure Alice’s mother for her coffin whilst she is still alive. The pet monkey sitting in the fireplace wringing its hands, the rug which is the skin of a great dane. Watch out for a replay of the Passion story at the end with Alice as an innocent Christ figure and her father as the evil deity refusing to let the cup pass from her; it’s quite striking.
I do wonder why Comyns isn’t better known. This is a sharp and very unusual analysis of the place of women in society and of violence against women, told in an original way.
This novel is written from the point of view of Alice Rowlands, daughter of a Vet living in South London. Her father is brutal and cruel to Alice and her mother. Following her mother’s death he brings a rather brash girlfriend into the house. Alice is effectively a servant. She has few friends but is courted by Henry Peebles (known as Blinkers), who is kind to her. Alice moves to the coast to become housekeeper to Blinkers’ mother. Here she has a brief flirtation with a sailor. Strange things start to happen to Alice; she has to return to London and the oddness continues. To say more would give things away. This isn’t a ghost story; much earlier (written in 1959) it still has an element of magic realism, but could also be described as suburban gothic. Being set at a vets there are also plenty of animals and a rather creepy vivisectionist who visits to collect puppies.
Comyns came up with the idea for this novel from a dream she had whilst staying in a cottage owned by Kim Philby (a friend of her husband’s). In the early 1930s she had been part of the bohemian scene in London, mixi ng with Dylan Thomas, Augustus John and others.
Comyns is a unique writer; some of the grotesque are almost comic and many of the tragic scenes also have a comic element. Although there is fary tale and enchantment here; the theme is really concerning an evil; the treatment of Edwardian daughters and wives going on behind respectable front doors. Alice’s mother is entirely trapped with not a hope of escape and she withers away before Alice’s eyes. Alice is a tragic figure, innocent in a predatory world. The writing is clear and precise and the descriptions are excellent. Her characters are well drawn; even the monstrous ones, like Alice’s father are all too human.
There are some unusual and deft touches; the undertaker arriving to measure Alice’s mother for her coffin whilst she is still alive. The pet monkey sitting in the fireplace wringing its hands, the rug which is the skin of a great dane. Watch out for a replay of the Passion story at the end with Alice as an innocent Christ figure and her father as the evil deity refusing to let the cup pass from her; it’s quite striking.
I do wonder why Comyns isn’t better known. This is a sharp and very unusual analysis of the place of women in society and of violence against women, told in an original way.
Read
March 17, 2019While reading Our Spoons Came from Woolworths, I was struck by the amount of information Barbara Comyns squeezed into that title. With this book, the opposite point could be made — the title gives very little away. Yes, the main character/narrator is the daughter of a vet, but it isn't the fact that her father is a vet that is most significant in the story (though it provides a useful backdrop), rather that he is a brutal domineering parent and that his daughter must find a way to escape his control.
In the other books I've read by Barbara Comyns, there has been quite a cast of unloving parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, no doubt reflecting the state of the world as experienced by young women and children (Comyns' main characters) in the early decades of the twentieth century, the time in which she grew up. No matter how much I've heard about such abuses of power within the 'safety' of the family circle, it's still very disturbing to hear about them again, and when it is Barbara Comyns who is telling the tale, there's added shock value. Her skill as I understand it after reading six of her books, is the ability to combine the ordinary with the extraordinary. Some of the books contain more of the ordinary than I would like, but this one, and one or two of the others, soar beautifully towards the truly bizarre.
In the other books I've read by Barbara Comyns, there has been quite a cast of unloving parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, no doubt reflecting the state of the world as experienced by young women and children (Comyns' main characters) in the early decades of the twentieth century, the time in which she grew up. No matter how much I've heard about such abuses of power within the 'safety' of the family circle, it's still very disturbing to hear about them again, and when it is Barbara Comyns who is telling the tale, there's added shock value. Her skill as I understand it after reading six of her books, is the ability to combine the ordinary with the extraordinary. Some of the books contain more of the ordinary than I would like, but this one, and one or two of the others, soar beautifully towards the truly bizarre.
Read
July 28, 2017Hey, I've got a great idea! Why don't I read this skinny little novel, you know, as a quick summer read, and add it to my cute little shelf that I've endearingly named “a buck and change?”
I mean, it's called The Vet's Daughter, and what could be more adorable or summer-ish than a story coming out of London in the 1950s, of a daughter and her veterinarian father?
Well, let's see. . . let's see. . . what could be more adorable or summer-ish than this pale blue, 133 page novel, with pictures of whimsical legs of pantyhose blowing on the front cover?
Um. . . how about a smoothie made of arsenic and someone's stolen kidney?
A noose blowing gently from the branches of an apple tree?
Sylvia Plath baking her own head in the oven after baking a batch of cookies for the neighborhood kids?
Turns out, the veterinarian in this story (by page 6) has tossed a “yellow puppy with its laughing, panting face” into a sack and has sold it, for its organs, to a “vivisectionist.”
That's a few years after he forces his wife to unlace his boots, then kicks her in the face with the boots still on, breaking all of her front teeth, telling her she's ugly for the rest of their miserable marriage.
That's a few years before the wife, with her broken teeth and her broken life, tells her daughter, Alice (the vet's daughter), “It's sour, the soil in London, and so is the life I've led.” She dreams of the freedom that her death will bring.
And this, all before page 20. . . and it only gets worse from there, people.
This is the bleakest, most depressing book I have ever encountered in my life. I am lucky; I am neither the victim of physical abuse NOR depressed, but the author, Barbara Comyns was, and this novel was clearly a catharsis that she needed.
HOWEVER, now I need my own personal catharsis, or at least a few weeks of therapy.
Would I recommend this to you? Why, do I HATE you?
I can't even rate this. How can I rate one woman's need to have a catharsis, or this end result?
In case any part of my review has left you unclear on my feelings, I leave you with these lines, courtesy of T.S. Eliot:
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
I mean, it's called The Vet's Daughter, and what could be more adorable or summer-ish than a story coming out of London in the 1950s, of a daughter and her veterinarian father?
Well, let's see. . . let's see. . . what could be more adorable or summer-ish than this pale blue, 133 page novel, with pictures of whimsical legs of pantyhose blowing on the front cover?
Um. . . how about a smoothie made of arsenic and someone's stolen kidney?
A noose blowing gently from the branches of an apple tree?
Sylvia Plath baking her own head in the oven after baking a batch of cookies for the neighborhood kids?
Turns out, the veterinarian in this story (by page 6) has tossed a “yellow puppy with its laughing, panting face” into a sack and has sold it, for its organs, to a “vivisectionist.”
That's a few years after he forces his wife to unlace his boots, then kicks her in the face with the boots still on, breaking all of her front teeth, telling her she's ugly for the rest of their miserable marriage.
That's a few years before the wife, with her broken teeth and her broken life, tells her daughter, Alice (the vet's daughter), “It's sour, the soil in London, and so is the life I've led.” She dreams of the freedom that her death will bring.
And this, all before page 20. . . and it only gets worse from there, people.
This is the bleakest, most depressing book I have ever encountered in my life. I am lucky; I am neither the victim of physical abuse NOR depressed, but the author, Barbara Comyns was, and this novel was clearly a catharsis that she needed.
HOWEVER, now I need my own personal catharsis, or at least a few weeks of therapy.
Would I recommend this to you? Why, do I HATE you?
I can't even rate this. How can I rate one woman's need to have a catharsis, or this end result?
In case any part of my review has left you unclear on my feelings, I leave you with these lines, courtesy of T.S. Eliot:
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
August 1, 2021
This paperback -novel was a gift from my friend during our lunch date. (thank you Claire).
Before I dived into this slim, small print classic - 133 pages - I spent some time reading about the author - Barbara Comyns, the English writer and artist.
She was born in 1907…..and died in 1992. She married, had two children, and divorced.
“The Vet’s Daughter” was written in 1959.
Barbara Comyns grew up in Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. She was the fourth of six children. (five girls and 1 boy). The children were educated by different governesses who had few qualifications to teach.
There were countless pets, hens, pigs, etc. including a peacock. Mother was deaf. Father was a “monstrous bull”.
Barbara Comyns started writing at the age of ten. She illustrated her own stories—but had no formal teachings in either writing or drawing.
The ‘idea’ for “The Vet’s Daughter” was conceived during Comyns’ honeymoon…..after awakening from a dream she had.
The heroine in “The Vet’s Daughter” is seventeen-year-old Alice Rowlands. Like Comyns own father, Alice’s father is a monster. He is a vet who shows no tenderness for animals (selling ones nobody wants to the local vivisectionist), and the sight of his sick wife enrages him, as does Alice’s paper-white skin.
This novel is written in first person. It’s a freaky-disturbing-and strangely-bizzare story…. but powerful in that ‘can’t-stop-reading’— intriguing-curious way.
Alice Rowland’s grows up in the south of London. She longs for romance ( she was 17…I should hope so!)….
“Some day I’ll have a baby with frilly pillows and men much grander than my father will open shop doors to me—both doors at once, perhaps”. ……
but in fact her life for Alice was soul-destroying, oppressive, and sorrowful. Domestic life was horrific…..
yet, Barbara Comyns had an interesting style in writing….(IMO). It felt a little mundane —almost pragmatic—‘matter-of-fact’—deadpan —UN-exaggerated crafting. The writing itself is much of what I found interesting.
“Cries coming from Mother’s room. They sounded awful, and I wished I hadn’t read about the Lord of Pomeroy— perhaps the lower part of her face had been shot away in the night. I went to her door, and, although Mother was not religious anymore, she was crying to God and there was a light under her door”.
“Then I went in. Although her face was twisted with pain and tear-drenched, it was all there. She lay with her pain framed in the shining of her brass bed, and she did not see me at first”.
“I called, ‘Mother’! and she turned and saw me from the sides of her eyes”.
“Hush, dear, don’t let your father know, she whispered. There is nothing you can do”.
“Although she protested that I might make noise, I filled her stone hot-water bottle with boiling water and brought her a glass of warm milk, but there was little I could do to help her and she lay there whimpering. To migrate relief she eventually dozed off. I watched her in the gaslight. She lay all twisted under the honeycomb counterpane. One hand kept moving, but the rest of her was still. I felt a great sorrow for her and knew that she would soon die, and that her small and gentle presence would be gone and I would be alone with Father. I did not like to leave her and sat there until it was morning. On a wooden chair I saw her a little petticoat and rather gray and sad corsets waiting to be worn”.
I should have felt bleak, sad, devastated even….but, instead, I was simply present and interested. (curious from start to finish).
Alice wasn’t the only person who looked after Mother. A housekeeper came, ‘Mrs. Churchill’….(perhaps the only balanced character in this story)….came to oversee the major needs of Mother. Alice liked Mrs. Churchill. It was Father — who nobody wanted to be around. He often hit Alice. If the bacon was burnt or the coffee was weak….he came at Alice like fricken-psycho.
Eventually as it was inevitable —[we saw it coming], Mother died…
but —- yuck—- not ‘before’ Father had a coffin-maker come to the house to MEASURE her ALIVE body.
After Mother died, it didn’t take long until Father had a new lady-friend move into the house.
Rosa - speaking to Alice:
“She looked at the room with great distaste, and said I can’t quite picture myself sleeping in a room like this. I shall speak to your father about it. I’d like to see your little room, if I may, dear”.
Ha….(think of Cruella….from ‘101 Dalmatians’)…
Rosa was a pushy-obtrusive-and full of herself, type woman.
Needless to say, Alice and Rosa weren’t pals.
Alice is sent away - she was to be a companion to a mother of one of her father’s veterinary friends, Mr. Peebles….(Alice nicknames him Blinkers).
It is at this country home where strange events begin to occur for Alice….mystical, weird, paranormal, ‘occult’ powers develop. (Alice begins to see these occurrences as gifts).
“When I returned home Rosa and Father were drinking port in the dining-room, and the beef that was boiling in the kitchen was nearly dry and the carrots had stuck to the bottom of the saucepan. I added more water, and balls of dough to make dumplings. The dumplings swelled up huge and danced in the boiling gravy, and the kitchen was filled with steam. Water poured down the windows like rain inside out. I began to think I could hear water pouring and falling. Then I thought I could see it, and it was as if floods had come, and everywhere there was water very gray and silvery, and I seemed to be floating above it. I came to a mountain of very dark water, but, when I reached the top, it was a water garden where everything sparkled. Although the water was rushing very fast, it always stayed in the same beautiful shapes, and these were fountains and trees and flowers all shimmering as if made of moving ice. It was so unbelievably beautiful I felt how privileged I was to see it. Then the birds came, enormous birds slowly flying, and they were made of water, too. Sometimes clouds covered them, but they would appear again, very proud and heavy, and each keeping to his appointed route. The wonderful water world didn’t last long because a mist came, and gradually it wasn’t there, and something was hurting my head. Somehow I’d managed to fall on the kitchen floor, and not my head on a coal scuttle. Coal had got in my hair, but otherwise everything was as it had been before I’d seen the water garden—just boiling beef and steam, and heard Rosa’s and Father’s voices coming through the wall”.
“In the night I was awaken and floating, as I went up, the blankets fell to the floor. I could feel nothing below me—and nothing above until I came near the ceiling and it was hard to breathe there. I thought, I mustn’t break the gas globe. I felt it carefully with my hands, and something very light in them, and it was the broken mantle. I kept very still up there because I was afraid of breaking other things in that small crowded room, but quite soon, it seemed, I was gently coming down again. I folded my hands over my chest and kept very straight, and floated down to the couch where I had been lying. I was not afraid, but very calm and peaceful. In the morning I knew it wasn’t a dream because the blankets were still on the floor and I saw the gas mantle was broken and chalky powder was still on my hands”.
The levitations….the floating…was strangely compelling:
“At night I was all alone in the house. Although I slept with my head under the bedclothes, I could hear awful creaking‘s on the stairs, and sometimes I thought I could hear whisperings by my bed.
I asked Mrs. Churchill if she would stay and keep me company; but she said her husband didn’t like her to be out at night, and she had ‘our Vera’s’ boy staying with her while his mother was in the hospital. One night the dogs started barking and yelping and I thought something terrible really had happened. I lay in bed shivering, too afraid to go and see if the house were on fire, or if burglars were creeping through the pantry window. In the morning I found the cage that contained the old cock with the diseased I had fallen to the ground, and the bird was dead and heavy”.
I can’t say much more without spoilers — but the ending is shocking —graphic-in-details. Even though this tale shifts from reality to fantasy….
what ‘does’ feel real -(to me anyway)…Alice was able to use her occult powers to rise above her actual life at times (temporarily) — but - she could (permanently), escape her life.
This novel leaves us thinking - it raises questions - but it’s mysterious and touching. Alice is actually very lovable….
The atmosphere, surroundings, and storytelling words are vividly etched unsentimentally …..
Fascinating little offbeat-type book. I enjoyed my time reading it tremendously
I have now downloaded two more books by Barbara Comyns (wish THIS book came in an ebook-format)….as reading the small print kept reminding me I need to make an eye appointment.
….I’ve a few advance-books on my plate to read- gifted from Netgalley….but when I get an opening break …I look forward to reading Comyns again.
For an author who had no formal writing training— she had natural talent.
On the back of my book —it says:
“Harrowing and haunting, like an unexpected cross between Flannery O’Conner and Stephen King. ‘The Vet’s Daughter’ it is a story of outraged innocence that culminates in a scene of appalling triumph”
Yep!!! Great description!
Before I dived into this slim, small print classic - 133 pages - I spent some time reading about the author - Barbara Comyns, the English writer and artist.
She was born in 1907…..and died in 1992. She married, had two children, and divorced.
“The Vet’s Daughter” was written in 1959.
Barbara Comyns grew up in Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. She was the fourth of six children. (five girls and 1 boy). The children were educated by different governesses who had few qualifications to teach.
There were countless pets, hens, pigs, etc. including a peacock. Mother was deaf. Father was a “monstrous bull”.
Barbara Comyns started writing at the age of ten. She illustrated her own stories—but had no formal teachings in either writing or drawing.
The ‘idea’ for “The Vet’s Daughter” was conceived during Comyns’ honeymoon…..after awakening from a dream she had.
The heroine in “The Vet’s Daughter” is seventeen-year-old Alice Rowlands. Like Comyns own father, Alice’s father is a monster. He is a vet who shows no tenderness for animals (selling ones nobody wants to the local vivisectionist), and the sight of his sick wife enrages him, as does Alice’s paper-white skin.
This novel is written in first person. It’s a freaky-disturbing-and strangely-bizzare story…. but powerful in that ‘can’t-stop-reading’— intriguing-curious way.
Alice Rowland’s grows up in the south of London. She longs for romance ( she was 17…I should hope so!)….
“Some day I’ll have a baby with frilly pillows and men much grander than my father will open shop doors to me—both doors at once, perhaps”. ……
but in fact her life for Alice was soul-destroying, oppressive, and sorrowful. Domestic life was horrific…..
yet, Barbara Comyns had an interesting style in writing….(IMO). It felt a little mundane —almost pragmatic—‘matter-of-fact’—deadpan —UN-exaggerated crafting. The writing itself is much of what I found interesting.
“Cries coming from Mother’s room. They sounded awful, and I wished I hadn’t read about the Lord of Pomeroy— perhaps the lower part of her face had been shot away in the night. I went to her door, and, although Mother was not religious anymore, she was crying to God and there was a light under her door”.
“Then I went in. Although her face was twisted with pain and tear-drenched, it was all there. She lay with her pain framed in the shining of her brass bed, and she did not see me at first”.
“I called, ‘Mother’! and she turned and saw me from the sides of her eyes”.
“Hush, dear, don’t let your father know, she whispered. There is nothing you can do”.
“Although she protested that I might make noise, I filled her stone hot-water bottle with boiling water and brought her a glass of warm milk, but there was little I could do to help her and she lay there whimpering. To migrate relief she eventually dozed off. I watched her in the gaslight. She lay all twisted under the honeycomb counterpane. One hand kept moving, but the rest of her was still. I felt a great sorrow for her and knew that she would soon die, and that her small and gentle presence would be gone and I would be alone with Father. I did not like to leave her and sat there until it was morning. On a wooden chair I saw her a little petticoat and rather gray and sad corsets waiting to be worn”.
I should have felt bleak, sad, devastated even….but, instead, I was simply present and interested. (curious from start to finish).
Alice wasn’t the only person who looked after Mother. A housekeeper came, ‘Mrs. Churchill’….(perhaps the only balanced character in this story)….came to oversee the major needs of Mother. Alice liked Mrs. Churchill. It was Father — who nobody wanted to be around. He often hit Alice. If the bacon was burnt or the coffee was weak….he came at Alice like fricken-psycho.
Eventually as it was inevitable —[we saw it coming], Mother died…
but —- yuck—- not ‘before’ Father had a coffin-maker come to the house to MEASURE her ALIVE body.
After Mother died, it didn’t take long until Father had a new lady-friend move into the house.
Rosa - speaking to Alice:
“She looked at the room with great distaste, and said I can’t quite picture myself sleeping in a room like this. I shall speak to your father about it. I’d like to see your little room, if I may, dear”.
Ha….(think of Cruella….from ‘101 Dalmatians’)…
Rosa was a pushy-obtrusive-and full of herself, type woman.
Needless to say, Alice and Rosa weren’t pals.
Alice is sent away - she was to be a companion to a mother of one of her father’s veterinary friends, Mr. Peebles….(Alice nicknames him Blinkers).
It is at this country home where strange events begin to occur for Alice….mystical, weird, paranormal, ‘occult’ powers develop. (Alice begins to see these occurrences as gifts).
“When I returned home Rosa and Father were drinking port in the dining-room, and the beef that was boiling in the kitchen was nearly dry and the carrots had stuck to the bottom of the saucepan. I added more water, and balls of dough to make dumplings. The dumplings swelled up huge and danced in the boiling gravy, and the kitchen was filled with steam. Water poured down the windows like rain inside out. I began to think I could hear water pouring and falling. Then I thought I could see it, and it was as if floods had come, and everywhere there was water very gray and silvery, and I seemed to be floating above it. I came to a mountain of very dark water, but, when I reached the top, it was a water garden where everything sparkled. Although the water was rushing very fast, it always stayed in the same beautiful shapes, and these were fountains and trees and flowers all shimmering as if made of moving ice. It was so unbelievably beautiful I felt how privileged I was to see it. Then the birds came, enormous birds slowly flying, and they were made of water, too. Sometimes clouds covered them, but they would appear again, very proud and heavy, and each keeping to his appointed route. The wonderful water world didn’t last long because a mist came, and gradually it wasn’t there, and something was hurting my head. Somehow I’d managed to fall on the kitchen floor, and not my head on a coal scuttle. Coal had got in my hair, but otherwise everything was as it had been before I’d seen the water garden—just boiling beef and steam, and heard Rosa’s and Father’s voices coming through the wall”.
“In the night I was awaken and floating, as I went up, the blankets fell to the floor. I could feel nothing below me—and nothing above until I came near the ceiling and it was hard to breathe there. I thought, I mustn’t break the gas globe. I felt it carefully with my hands, and something very light in them, and it was the broken mantle. I kept very still up there because I was afraid of breaking other things in that small crowded room, but quite soon, it seemed, I was gently coming down again. I folded my hands over my chest and kept very straight, and floated down to the couch where I had been lying. I was not afraid, but very calm and peaceful. In the morning I knew it wasn’t a dream because the blankets were still on the floor and I saw the gas mantle was broken and chalky powder was still on my hands”.
The levitations….the floating…was strangely compelling:
“At night I was all alone in the house. Although I slept with my head under the bedclothes, I could hear awful creaking‘s on the stairs, and sometimes I thought I could hear whisperings by my bed.
I asked Mrs. Churchill if she would stay and keep me company; but she said her husband didn’t like her to be out at night, and she had ‘our Vera’s’ boy staying with her while his mother was in the hospital. One night the dogs started barking and yelping and I thought something terrible really had happened. I lay in bed shivering, too afraid to go and see if the house were on fire, or if burglars were creeping through the pantry window. In the morning I found the cage that contained the old cock with the diseased I had fallen to the ground, and the bird was dead and heavy”.
I can’t say much more without spoilers — but the ending is shocking —graphic-in-details. Even though this tale shifts from reality to fantasy….
what ‘does’ feel real -(to me anyway)…Alice was able to use her occult powers to rise above her actual life at times (temporarily) — but - she could (permanently), escape her life.
This novel leaves us thinking - it raises questions - but it’s mysterious and touching. Alice is actually very lovable….
The atmosphere, surroundings, and storytelling words are vividly etched unsentimentally …..
Fascinating little offbeat-type book. I enjoyed my time reading it tremendously
I have now downloaded two more books by Barbara Comyns (wish THIS book came in an ebook-format)….as reading the small print kept reminding me I need to make an eye appointment.
….I’ve a few advance-books on my plate to read- gifted from Netgalley….but when I get an opening break …I look forward to reading Comyns again.
For an author who had no formal writing training— she had natural talent.
On the back of my book —it says:
“Harrowing and haunting, like an unexpected cross between Flannery O’Conner and Stephen King. ‘The Vet’s Daughter’ it is a story of outraged innocence that culminates in a scene of appalling triumph”
Yep!!! Great description!
May 14, 2020
I had a hard time rating this. I think I will have a hard time reviewing it. Let me think of good things to say about the book:
• The New York Review of Books has re-issued this piece of fiction. And I hold their choices in extremely high regard.
• It held my attention throughout.
• The writing was good.
• The book is incredibly dark, but it was only 133 pages.
• The first edition of the book (Heinemann, 1959) has a really cool (descriptive of the theme of the book) illustration on its cover. Graham Greene said of Ms. Comyns and the book: The strange offbeat talent of Miss Comyns and that innocent eye which observes with childlike simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrences, these have never, I think, been more impressively exercised than in “The Vet’s Daughter”.
• I learned a new word when the wretch of the father asked his daughter whether he ever stinted her or her mother: restrict (someone) in the amount of something, especially money, given or permitted
So that isn’t too bad. It’s just that it is incredibly incredibly dark (I guess I am repeating myself). But that doesn’t mean a book is bad. I guess this is not the sort of reading I would want to regularly immerse myself in.
OK, I talked myself into it. I’ll give it 3.5 stars. 😊 (I read it last night and was toying with 3 stars.)
Another good thing: in 1980 she wrote an Introduction to the novel (21 years after she wrote the book!) for a re-issue from Virago (and re-published in the NYRB edition), so one gains an excellent window into how this book came about with its peculiar tale. She was 57 years old when she wrote the novel and 78 years old when she wrote the Introduction to it. What an interesting life she led! In her own words describing the period of time when she was married to her first husband and had young children: During my marriage I worked as an artist’s model, sometimes posing with my babies. The pay was very poor and, with two children depending on me, I became a business woman out of desperation, converting old houses into flats and running a garage where I sold elderly unusual cars, Delages and Lagondas (Jim: French and British luxury vehicles, respectively) in particular. Things were going fairly well until war (WWII) loomed nearer and nearer. I lost my tenants and soon no one wanted to buy my magnificent old cars and they were towed away to a breaker’s yard.”
Reviews and such:
A good essay about Barbara Comyns: https://unbound.com/boundless/2019/03...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/j...
her obituary: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pe...
from a blog site: https://www.stuckinabook.com/vets-dau...
• The New York Review of Books has re-issued this piece of fiction. And I hold their choices in extremely high regard.
• It held my attention throughout.
• The writing was good.
• The book is incredibly dark, but it was only 133 pages.
• The first edition of the book (Heinemann, 1959) has a really cool (descriptive of the theme of the book) illustration on its cover. Graham Greene said of Ms. Comyns and the book: The strange offbeat talent of Miss Comyns and that innocent eye which observes with childlike simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrences, these have never, I think, been more impressively exercised than in “The Vet’s Daughter”.
• I learned a new word when the wretch of the father asked his daughter whether he ever stinted her or her mother: restrict (someone) in the amount of something, especially money, given or permitted
So that isn’t too bad. It’s just that it is incredibly incredibly dark (I guess I am repeating myself). But that doesn’t mean a book is bad. I guess this is not the sort of reading I would want to regularly immerse myself in.
OK, I talked myself into it. I’ll give it 3.5 stars. 😊 (I read it last night and was toying with 3 stars.)
Another good thing: in 1980 she wrote an Introduction to the novel (21 years after she wrote the book!) for a re-issue from Virago (and re-published in the NYRB edition), so one gains an excellent window into how this book came about with its peculiar tale. She was 57 years old when she wrote the novel and 78 years old when she wrote the Introduction to it. What an interesting life she led! In her own words describing the period of time when she was married to her first husband and had young children: During my marriage I worked as an artist’s model, sometimes posing with my babies. The pay was very poor and, with two children depending on me, I became a business woman out of desperation, converting old houses into flats and running a garage where I sold elderly unusual cars, Delages and Lagondas (Jim: French and British luxury vehicles, respectively) in particular. Things were going fairly well until war (WWII) loomed nearer and nearer. I lost my tenants and soon no one wanted to buy my magnificent old cars and they were towed away to a breaker’s yard.”
Reviews and such:
A good essay about Barbara Comyns: https://unbound.com/boundless/2019/03...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/j...
her obituary: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pe...
from a blog site: https://www.stuckinabook.com/vets-dau...
July 14, 2016
The Vets Daughter by Barbara Comyns was published in 1959.
I came across this novel in an interesting article in a women's magazine in the book section. The writer of the article had chosen a popular female author from the 1920s, 1930s and 40s and 50s and recommended a couple of books by each of these authors as fiction worth reading today. I thought it was an interesting idea and picked a novel by each author and The vet's daughter is my first one.
A short book consisting of 133 pages so not too taxing. The story is about Alice who lives with her brutal and strange veterinary father and bedridden mother in a sinister suburb of London.
The Vet's daughter is a harrowing and haunting tale of family life with a little magic realism thrown in and a lot of strange behaviour on the parts of the characters. I enjoyed the writing and the story progressed slowly however some of the characters actions were difficult to understand. The ending left me baffled and therefore probably reflects my low rating on this novel.
An interesting read but not a book I will be recommending.
I came across this novel in an interesting article in a women's magazine in the book section. The writer of the article had chosen a popular female author from the 1920s, 1930s and 40s and 50s and recommended a couple of books by each of these authors as fiction worth reading today. I thought it was an interesting idea and picked a novel by each author and The vet's daughter is my first one.
A short book consisting of 133 pages so not too taxing. The story is about Alice who lives with her brutal and strange veterinary father and bedridden mother in a sinister suburb of London.
The Vet's daughter is a harrowing and haunting tale of family life with a little magic realism thrown in and a lot of strange behaviour on the parts of the characters. I enjoyed the writing and the story progressed slowly however some of the characters actions were difficult to understand. The ending left me baffled and therefore probably reflects my low rating on this novel.
An interesting read but not a book I will be recommending.
July 17, 2020
As with the other Comyns books I’ve read, the narration propels me. It reads easily, sometimes with startling insight, as it drives me to where it wants to go. Narrated in the Comyns trademark naïve manner, this book’s Alice (of Wonderland?) seems less naïve and more blunt than Comyns’ other narrators. Perhaps that’s because she is young and sheltered (not in a good way) and the tone fits her circumstances. I question the first-person narration only in relation to the ending, especially with one sentence in the penultimate chapter forecasting part of the outcome--a logistical, technical issue that may work for you, though it didn't for me.
While Comyns’ The Juniper Tree is based on a fairy tale, this simpler, more magical story seems even more like a Grimm (and grim) tale, due to its depiction of an adolescent girl who has a cruel father, a wannabe-stepmother, and an unusual ability. The reviews I read before reading the novel made me think of Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, but that was a false assumption. At times, while reading The Vet's Daughter, I thought of Sylvia Warner Townsend’s Lolly Willowes, which it ultimately is not like either. But it does share qualities found in what Francine Prose calls Strange Books; Prose says (in a foreword of the Jackson) this type of novel shares not only oddity but beauty, originality, a certain visionary intensity, and the ability to make us feel as if we have been invited into a private, very intimate world with striking similarities to our world, whatever that might be.
While Comyns’ The Juniper Tree is based on a fairy tale, this simpler, more magical story seems even more like a Grimm (and grim) tale, due to its depiction of an adolescent girl who has a cruel father, a wannabe-stepmother, and an unusual ability. The reviews I read before reading the novel made me think of Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, but that was a false assumption. At times, while reading The Vet's Daughter, I thought of Sylvia Warner Townsend’s Lolly Willowes, which it ultimately is not like either. But it does share qualities found in what Francine Prose calls Strange Books; Prose says (in a foreword of the Jackson) this type of novel shares not only oddity but beauty, originality, a certain visionary intensity, and the ability to make us feel as if we have been invited into a private, very intimate world with striking similarities to our world, whatever that might be.
July 9, 2013
The day was nearly over and it was like most of the days I could remember: all overshadowed by my father and cleaning the cats' cages and the smell of cabbages, escaping gas and my father's scent. There were moments of peace, and sometimes sunlight outside. It was like that all of the time.
Alice's mother sides with the walls, her voice heard when her husband isn't home. Her daughter didn't walk until she was two. The father's dismissive gaze holds her down in his saved disgust. To him she crawls on the floor with her mother's frightened face. Alice growing up doesn't stand up to him. Without a spine, a flower leaning towards snatched pale light. My NYRB copy speaks of a saving inner world. I didn't know this. I saw the stolen moments from the outside. A walk with her deaf and dumb friend, to be paid for later in slaps. A good book to not be finished when father comes home. It is between the cruelty, blows to the head, the chills of what might have been if he had noticed her more. Broken teeth to resemble her mother more, perhaps. The father's cold blooded nature runs under the veins of his veterinary practice. Animals sold to a vivisectionist, poison on the tongue euthanasia. His courtship talk was of beheading tortoises. The sad lives of the animals is the air they breathe. Related to and taken for granted as their own. Alice is one of them. This might have been the best thing about 'Daughter', to me.
He is a giant to Alice, larger still for her mother's cowering. I felt sorrier for Alice when her dying mother hopes that the gifts were from her husband instead. She never knew better after all of that time. I suppose there was some safety in a belief in a nicer world for Alice but it felt hollow to me when it was borrowed on phantoms. They had each other and it is a faraway voice describing a life before her daughter that she has to cling to as it leaves her all alone. Please be kind to Alice. It would be better to send her away. She had had walks out of the house for errands. This was when the story lived, when she walks out on her leash, sensing the end of the line before it comes. The man is too big for Alice. His new woman is even better. It was perfect when she hollars that Alice is "a scream!" when she hadn't even said anything. Her monster mask is only a mask in that she believes she has a mask to hide it. If you've read the Dido Twite series by Joan Aiken I'd liken it to those. A less hysterical version of those books. The housemaids are up to no good, the stepmothers with villain's wide mouths and makeup. Alice meets up with a conniving pair later on in the book who could've been an understudy for the baddies Twite faces. 'Daughter' takes a turn for the worse in this section. It was going good when Alice falters at a core belief in in world goodness. It can't be helped. She knows the friendly vet who works with her father wants to marry her. He's unattractive. She calls him "Blinker". If he were an attractive man he might have been the happy ending of 'Dead'. The attractive man she does want is turned off when he sees Alice levitating in her sleep. I don't know about the random bed levitation once she is set up to live as companion to the Blinker's mother. I thought it was great that she doesn't want to sacrifice herself to the comfort of the old woman. It fit the stolen life she's lead and increasingly finds harder to be so selfless. I just wasn't that interested in what happened to mama Blinker or the servants. By the time she's back home and walking into a paper bag of make us lots of money with a levitating trick I didn't care too much. When was Alice going to face a world that had Alice in it. It would have been better if she had never left home, or found something more than "Save me, Blinker" to live for. Father and his girlfriend are mean sons of bitches but what would she look like if they weren't there? Would she moon after some boring guy in a happy ending? I was hoping to find a Comyns book that was as good as her knack for laying the lay of the land. I liked so much about 'Dead' that it didn't play for quirks (no matter how odd ducks some of the villagers were) and she rolls out a random levitating stunt? Whatever for? She wrote in her introduction that both books "wrote themselves". I believe that, in the beginning. It is so very real in the beginning. It was like the parrot in the cage. It was where he lived.
Alice's mother sides with the walls, her voice heard when her husband isn't home. Her daughter didn't walk until she was two. The father's dismissive gaze holds her down in his saved disgust. To him she crawls on the floor with her mother's frightened face. Alice growing up doesn't stand up to him. Without a spine, a flower leaning towards snatched pale light. My NYRB copy speaks of a saving inner world. I didn't know this. I saw the stolen moments from the outside. A walk with her deaf and dumb friend, to be paid for later in slaps. A good book to not be finished when father comes home. It is between the cruelty, blows to the head, the chills of what might have been if he had noticed her more. Broken teeth to resemble her mother more, perhaps. The father's cold blooded nature runs under the veins of his veterinary practice. Animals sold to a vivisectionist, poison on the tongue euthanasia. His courtship talk was of beheading tortoises. The sad lives of the animals is the air they breathe. Related to and taken for granted as their own. Alice is one of them. This might have been the best thing about 'Daughter', to me.
He is a giant to Alice, larger still for her mother's cowering. I felt sorrier for Alice when her dying mother hopes that the gifts were from her husband instead. She never knew better after all of that time. I suppose there was some safety in a belief in a nicer world for Alice but it felt hollow to me when it was borrowed on phantoms. They had each other and it is a faraway voice describing a life before her daughter that she has to cling to as it leaves her all alone. Please be kind to Alice. It would be better to send her away. She had had walks out of the house for errands. This was when the story lived, when she walks out on her leash, sensing the end of the line before it comes. The man is too big for Alice. His new woman is even better. It was perfect when she hollars that Alice is "a scream!" when she hadn't even said anything. Her monster mask is only a mask in that she believes she has a mask to hide it. If you've read the Dido Twite series by Joan Aiken I'd liken it to those. A less hysterical version of those books. The housemaids are up to no good, the stepmothers with villain's wide mouths and makeup. Alice meets up with a conniving pair later on in the book who could've been an understudy for the baddies Twite faces. 'Daughter' takes a turn for the worse in this section. It was going good when Alice falters at a core belief in in world goodness. It can't be helped. She knows the friendly vet who works with her father wants to marry her. He's unattractive. She calls him "Blinker". If he were an attractive man he might have been the happy ending of 'Dead'. The attractive man she does want is turned off when he sees Alice levitating in her sleep. I don't know about the random bed levitation once she is set up to live as companion to the Blinker's mother. I thought it was great that she doesn't want to sacrifice herself to the comfort of the old woman. It fit the stolen life she's lead and increasingly finds harder to be so selfless. I just wasn't that interested in what happened to mama Blinker or the servants. By the time she's back home and walking into a paper bag of make us lots of money with a levitating trick I didn't care too much. When was Alice going to face a world that had Alice in it. It would have been better if she had never left home, or found something more than "Save me, Blinker" to live for. Father and his girlfriend are mean sons of bitches but what would she look like if they weren't there? Would she moon after some boring guy in a happy ending? I was hoping to find a Comyns book that was as good as her knack for laying the lay of the land. I liked so much about 'Dead' that it didn't play for quirks (no matter how odd ducks some of the villagers were) and she rolls out a random levitating stunt? Whatever for? She wrote in her introduction that both books "wrote themselves". I believe that, in the beginning. It is so very real in the beginning. It was like the parrot in the cage. It was where he lived.
October 2, 2018
After two reads, I still felt this story deeply. It's one of those rare few novels that left me sitting in my chair unable to move for a while, unable to stop thinking, and it followed me on into the rest of my day. While I was completely absorbed in this story, I was even more impressed and carried away because of the writing. I found it to be absolutely brilliant.
All along, Comyns writes so believably, eloquently mixing the mundane with the horrific so that when we get to the point where this book verges into the unreal, what happens now seems no stranger or any less plausible than anything in this novel so far.
The Vet's Daughter is bleak, sad, and difficult to read emotionally, but at the same time it is hauntingly beautiful. The story told here is one of overwhelming loneliness and powerlessness, the stuff of many a novel, but recounted in a unique way that sets this book apart from others with the same themes. Not one word of the author's exceptional writing is wasted here -- she has this knack of not only making the horrific seem normal but also of turning the implausible into something believable in the world that her main character inhabits.
I realize that not everyone feels the same about this novel that I do, and that's okay, but I can't recommend this book highly enough or offer enough superlatives about it. It won't be for everyone, especially those people who need strict realism in their reading, but for it is perfect for readers who want a great combination of captivating story and superb writing. This is my first book by Barbara Comyns but far from the last.
more: https://www.readingavidly.com/2018/10...
All along, Comyns writes so believably, eloquently mixing the mundane with the horrific so that when we get to the point where this book verges into the unreal, what happens now seems no stranger or any less plausible than anything in this novel so far.
The Vet's Daughter is bleak, sad, and difficult to read emotionally, but at the same time it is hauntingly beautiful. The story told here is one of overwhelming loneliness and powerlessness, the stuff of many a novel, but recounted in a unique way that sets this book apart from others with the same themes. Not one word of the author's exceptional writing is wasted here -- she has this knack of not only making the horrific seem normal but also of turning the implausible into something believable in the world that her main character inhabits.
I realize that not everyone feels the same about this novel that I do, and that's okay, but I can't recommend this book highly enough or offer enough superlatives about it. It won't be for everyone, especially those people who need strict realism in their reading, but for it is perfect for readers who want a great combination of captivating story and superb writing. This is my first book by Barbara Comyns but far from the last.
more: https://www.readingavidly.com/2018/10...
August 20, 2015
Perhaps the less said about this the better, as I knew nothing much going into it (besides that Comyns had written Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, and so was obviously amazing), and it really crept over me out of nowhere. In the best ways. Comyns is a fantastic, unique stylist, with a deadpan sense of the macabre and an eye for detail, often very odd and defining ones that inflect her works into really her own territory of realist-grotesque.
November 18, 2023
(Nervously checks how many other Comyns novels there are.)
October 11, 2020
No real review because you have to be a fan of Comyns' odd style of narration in order to understand this book, much less enjoy it. I did enjoy it, but heaven help anyone expecting a straightforward tale. Had I not read two other of her earlier books, I probably would have been lost. Comyns is an acquired taste.
July 21, 2010
This book pumps a person with longing—both abstract and specific. I long for the heath,for tendrils on my rose-pink countenance. I long for mildew in attic rooms. I long to float towards a ceiling. I long to be drawn across a frozen pond by some starry man-hunk (a sort of late-Victorian Ice Castles where the protagonist is blind on the inside. “We forgot about the flowers,” is right!). The details here are superb and the writing style, so much so I should probably give up the ghost. I love how withdrawn and matter-of-fact the protagonist is. Tragedy assaults her and quietly she accepts it; we watch it again and again. BEAUTIFUL. A new fave, even if the ending (SPOILER ALERT) is a cop out.
October 26, 2020
Oh, hell. This is an incredible novel.
August 9, 2022
The Vet’s Daughter is one of those books where the reader should go in knowing as little as possible so I’ll break tradition and not provide a summary, although the cover does contain a little clue what to expect. I will say that I had a tremendous time reading it.
Over the years I’ve found out that I REALLY like gothic novels, especially ones written by women : Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Sylvia Townshend Warner , Muriel Spark, Flannery O’ Connor, Otessa Moshfegh the list goes on. Like these authors’ books. The Vet’s Daughter contains grotesque characters, some dark moments and a bit of a body count. It’s also written in a flowing manner so it can be read in one sitting.
The book itself is about emancipation, which I see is a common theme in gothic fiction as well. The question is that it always happens in unconventional ways and The Vet’s Daughter is no exception.
I think that Barbara Comyns, despite The Vet’s Daughter always being in print (and now a lot of her books are being reissued by Daunt Press) is an underrated author. I do urge people who love gothic fiction to check out The Vet’s Daughter as it is an example of how the genre can be executed well.
Over the years I’ve found out that I REALLY like gothic novels, especially ones written by women : Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Sylvia Townshend Warner , Muriel Spark, Flannery O’ Connor, Otessa Moshfegh the list goes on. Like these authors’ books. The Vet’s Daughter contains grotesque characters, some dark moments and a bit of a body count. It’s also written in a flowing manner so it can be read in one sitting.
The book itself is about emancipation, which I see is a common theme in gothic fiction as well. The question is that it always happens in unconventional ways and The Vet’s Daughter is no exception.
I think that Barbara Comyns, despite The Vet’s Daughter always being in print (and now a lot of her books are being reissued by Daunt Press) is an underrated author. I do urge people who love gothic fiction to check out The Vet’s Daughter as it is an example of how the genre can be executed well.
September 23, 2017
I love Comyns unreservedly, but this is by far my least favorite of her books I've read. She never shied away from bleakness, but the bleakness is usually leavened by humor and moments of lightheartedness, but unfortunately there is virtually none of either here. It just kind of goes from bleak to bleaker to bleaker still. I think I understand why she's not more widely read: this is her best-known work; people read this, get bummed out, peg her as a bummer author, and then don't bother to read any more by her—and that's a shame. For top-echelon Comyns, read Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, The Skin Chairs, or Sisters By a River instead.
December 26, 2018
Dark domestic drama here with a compelling narrator in Alice, whose situation just seems to wrench one's heart a bit tighter in a vise with each passing chapter. The odd touch of the supernatural really sets this book apart. I also enjoyed the many animal references, and the stellar cast of minor characters, of which Comyns appears to have had a natural flair for conjuring up. Of the three Comyns novels I've read so far, though, my favorite remains Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. But this one comes in at a close second.
October 16, 2011
Such an odd little book... I have no idea how to rate it and am sitting here trying to make sense of my indecisiveness. It was definitely well written -- the language sharply detailed and unique to the protagonist. But the story itself?
Alice, the local vet's daughter, recounts a life so bleak and downtrodden that it could easily rival something from Dickens. A brutal father, a mother with spirit and body long ago broken and a home filled with animals suffering various ailments are all described in the detached journalistic manner of someone who has come to accept the life (?) or lack of surrounding them.
"I entered the house. It was my home and it smelt of animals, although there was lino on the floor. In the brown hall my mother was standing; and she looked at me with her sad eyes half-covered by their heavy lids, but did not speak. She just stood there. Her bones were small and her shoulders sloped; her teeth were not straight either; so if she had been a dog, my father would have destroyed her."
And that's just the second paragraph! But there might be hope: Alice has a chance for escape and in doing so comes to discover a hidden talent so unique (unbelievably so) that her dreary life could quite possibly be… lifted. She may be rid of her dreadful family forever, that secret love for another finally returned, life might get to normal or even really good. And then again, perhaps not.
Original. Wonderful language. But the book's tone of harsh reality combined with fantastical elements sometimes didn't synch. For me. I am giving it a four, however, because it did keep me rapidly turning pages.
Alice, the local vet's daughter, recounts a life so bleak and downtrodden that it could easily rival something from Dickens. A brutal father, a mother with spirit and body long ago broken and a home filled with animals suffering various ailments are all described in the detached journalistic manner of someone who has come to accept the life (?) or lack of surrounding them.
"I entered the house. It was my home and it smelt of animals, although there was lino on the floor. In the brown hall my mother was standing; and she looked at me with her sad eyes half-covered by their heavy lids, but did not speak. She just stood there. Her bones were small and her shoulders sloped; her teeth were not straight either; so if she had been a dog, my father would have destroyed her."
And that's just the second paragraph! But there might be hope: Alice has a chance for escape and in doing so comes to discover a hidden talent so unique (unbelievably so) that her dreary life could quite possibly be… lifted. She may be rid of her dreadful family forever, that secret love for another finally returned, life might get to normal or even really good. And then again, perhaps not.
Original. Wonderful language. But the book's tone of harsh reality combined with fantastical elements sometimes didn't synch. For me. I am giving it a four, however, because it did keep me rapidly turning pages.
July 15, 2019
No había leido nada de Barbara Comyns, y no sé si sus demás obras son como ésta o no, pero confieso que me he quedado bastante impactada por cómo transcurre esta historia. Estaba yo algo equivocada, creía que La Hija del Veterinario, era una especie de novelita al estilo british, plácida y de humor agradable, no me pregunten porqué, prejuicios que se monta una ;-). Y me encuentro con una especie de cuento gótico, dónde la protagonista, Alice Rowlands es zarandeada una y otra vez por los embates de los personajes que se encuentra a su paso.
"-¿Usted ha flotado alguna vez, señora Peebles?
- No -dijo bastante molesta- Yo nunca haría una cosa así. Yo no soy peculiar".
Y lo veo como un cuento por lo caricaturesco de los personajes malvados y por lo ingenuos de los personajes bondadosos, y entre medias, una especie de violencia que está todo el tiempo presente, como un cuchillo amenazante, violencia que a veces se manifiesta, pero que en general está siempre en el ambiente y que se puede tocar, con lo cual el lector, espera que en cualquier momento se produzca un "zasss".
Es una historia extraña, me ha recordado también mucho a Harriet, de Elizabeth Jenkins, que también era un libro gloriosamente extraño: ingenuo y bizarro al mismo tiempo. La verdad es que ha sido una sorpresa estupenda mi primera incursión en Barbara Comyns ;-)
"Yo no quiero ser peculiar y diferente. Quiero ser una persona normal".
"-¿Usted ha flotado alguna vez, señora Peebles?
- No -dijo bastante molesta- Yo nunca haría una cosa así. Yo no soy peculiar".
Y lo veo como un cuento por lo caricaturesco de los personajes malvados y por lo ingenuos de los personajes bondadosos, y entre medias, una especie de violencia que está todo el tiempo presente, como un cuchillo amenazante, violencia que a veces se manifiesta, pero que en general está siempre en el ambiente y que se puede tocar, con lo cual el lector, espera que en cualquier momento se produzca un "zasss".
Es una historia extraña, me ha recordado también mucho a Harriet, de Elizabeth Jenkins, que también era un libro gloriosamente extraño: ingenuo y bizarro al mismo tiempo. La verdad es que ha sido una sorpresa estupenda mi primera incursión en Barbara Comyns ;-)
"Yo no quiero ser peculiar y diferente. Quiero ser una persona normal".
January 5, 2021
"Mrs. Peebles," I asked, "have you ever floated?"
She looked quite annoyed. "Oh no. I wouldn't do a thing like that. I'm not peculiar."
I must've been meant to be a post-Austen 40-something English woman living in the 1920s or 30s since I keep discovering these outstanding British authors like Warner, Taylor, and now, Comyns.
This is a tremendous book, which is weird because it's short and has a distinct succinctness to it that renders what happens in it all the more extraordinary. I won't ruin anything, because you simply must read it, but I can tell you this is the brooding, often violently disturbing, story of the titular Alice, daughter of an abusive, alcoholic veterinarian and his dying slave-wife. Alice is basically a slave, too, and seeks ways of escape, including love and an interlude serving as companion to a disturbed widow. But then something unusual begins to intrude on the novel, quietly at first, you won't think much of its mention until you realize that it is very much real. Dark and daring, I love this one!
She looked quite annoyed. "Oh no. I wouldn't do a thing like that. I'm not peculiar."
I must've been meant to be a post-Austen 40-something English woman living in the 1920s or 30s since I keep discovering these outstanding British authors like Warner, Taylor, and now, Comyns.
This is a tremendous book, which is weird because it's short and has a distinct succinctness to it that renders what happens in it all the more extraordinary. I won't ruin anything, because you simply must read it, but I can tell you this is the brooding, often violently disturbing, story of the titular Alice, daughter of an abusive, alcoholic veterinarian and his dying slave-wife. Alice is basically a slave, too, and seeks ways of escape, including love and an interlude serving as companion to a disturbed widow. But then something unusual begins to intrude on the novel, quietly at first, you won't think much of its mention until you realize that it is very much real. Dark and daring, I love this one!
May 6, 2023
I'd never heard of Barbara Comyns before stumbling across this on Instagram.
Having read up a little about her, it becomes clear that The Vet's Daughter is semi-autobiographical, with the protagonist Alice Rowlands loosely based on herself, her too growing up in a strict household with a violent and cruel father - the house full of animals including a pet monkey.
The Vet's Daughter is strange, eccentric, mystical. It carries pieces of the gothic as the young girl Alice grows up in her appaling Father's house while tending to her dying mother in South London.
Sent away to the countryside to tend to the vacant Mrs Peebles, it's here where a special power begins to blossom, a power which eventually results in tragedy.
Having read up a little about her, it becomes clear that The Vet's Daughter is semi-autobiographical, with the protagonist Alice Rowlands loosely based on herself, her too growing up in a strict household with a violent and cruel father - the house full of animals including a pet monkey.
The Vet's Daughter is strange, eccentric, mystical. It carries pieces of the gothic as the young girl Alice grows up in her appaling Father's house while tending to her dying mother in South London.
Sent away to the countryside to tend to the vacant Mrs Peebles, it's here where a special power begins to blossom, a power which eventually results in tragedy.
August 18, 2011
a fairly devastating bildungsroman set in what? 1920's? uk, in the mean streets of London and out on an island by Isle of Wight. Alice is 17 and living in a home that is truly an abusive and tortuous place, then her mom dies, and things start really going downhill. But then her sort-of-boyfriend gets her a gig out on that island taking care of his rich but very depressive mom. Then THAT mom dies (thanks Comyns!! [all her moms die sin her novels, sheesh]) then the story takes a turn from Dickensian brutality and Patrick Hamiltonian urban despair and ennui to Hangover Square
something you really shouldn't or don't expect, except this is Barbara Comyns, and you should always be ready for the grotesque, the surreal, the normal everyday world turning on you and running you over like a puppy dog on the highway.
something you really shouldn't or don't expect, except this is Barbara Comyns, and you should always be ready for the grotesque, the surreal, the normal everyday world turning on you and running you over like a puppy dog on the highway.
September 10, 2017
"My! is that the time? I don't want to be here when your father returns. He isn't half put out by your coming home--he said he'd break every bone in your body. Oh, he was only joking--you know what men are."
Precise, claustrophobic, oracular; disturbing, morbid, immersive. Alienation and creepy animal stench everywhere. As much in the unsaid as there is in the understated narrative and voice of Alice Rowlands.
In this book everyone resents each other's happiness, at least at some point. Isn't that one of life's awful secrets? It's what you do with that horrifying wellspring that matters.
I won't say much more. This is a very a quick read. Cruel, grotesque, gothic af. without being heavy handed. You need to feel the abysses of life to orient and reorient yourself in such a way that your perspectivalism doesn't make you a monster unaware.
Read this book. Read it. Seriously, do it.
Precise, claustrophobic, oracular; disturbing, morbid, immersive. Alienation and creepy animal stench everywhere. As much in the unsaid as there is in the understated narrative and voice of Alice Rowlands.
In this book everyone resents each other's happiness, at least at some point. Isn't that one of life's awful secrets? It's what you do with that horrifying wellspring that matters.
I won't say much more. This is a very a quick read. Cruel, grotesque, gothic af. without being heavy handed. You need to feel the abysses of life to orient and reorient yourself in such a way that your perspectivalism doesn't make you a monster unaware.
Read this book. Read it. Seriously, do it.
January 18, 2021
Well. Barbara Comyns is quite something.
There’s no point summarizing this. It would make no sense and indeed, the book makes very little sense. But who needs sense when there is style, idiosyncrasy and a fair bit of bonkers plot tied to just enough realist emotion, all packed neatly into 120 pages?
I had the NYRB Classics copy and it was further proof of their editors’ excellent taste in resurrecting Comyns, and also their cover designers uncanny knack for finding images that seem entirely random, and yet prove to have a sinister appropriateness. I spent the first half of the book thinking the cover showed red and white stockings dangling on a line, only to discover when I looked into it that it’s a painting by Louise Bourgeois called “legs and bones.” The book has nothing to do with legs, or bones, and yet it’s perfect.
There was also a delightful preface by the author explaining her unorthodox life, which was almost as entertaining as the story itself. Her distinctive style seems honestly come by, a product of a childhood spent with limited reading materials and limited education, and some pure originality of character.
There’s no point summarizing this. It would make no sense and indeed, the book makes very little sense. But who needs sense when there is style, idiosyncrasy and a fair bit of bonkers plot tied to just enough realist emotion, all packed neatly into 120 pages?
I had the NYRB Classics copy and it was further proof of their editors’ excellent taste in resurrecting Comyns, and also their cover designers uncanny knack for finding images that seem entirely random, and yet prove to have a sinister appropriateness. I spent the first half of the book thinking the cover showed red and white stockings dangling on a line, only to discover when I looked into it that it’s a painting by Louise Bourgeois called “legs and bones.” The book has nothing to do with legs, or bones, and yet it’s perfect.
There was also a delightful preface by the author explaining her unorthodox life, which was almost as entertaining as the story itself. Her distinctive style seems honestly come by, a product of a childhood spent with limited reading materials and limited education, and some pure originality of character.
December 15, 2016
Llegué a the Vet's Daughter de la mejor manera a la que se puede llegar a un libro: sin saber nada de él y gracias a la recomendación de una librera que adora su trabajo. Y aunque al principio me costó un poco entrar en la dinámica de la novela, rápidamente me acostumbré y pude disfrutar de una narradora muy peculiar que nos introduce en un ambiente tanto oscuro como inocente.
La voz de Alice, una chica de diecisiete años que vive con sus padres en una casa en los suburbios del Londres eduardiano que a su vez hace de clínica veterinaria para su padre, nos lleva de la mano hacia la opresión que se vive en su entorno a través de los ojos de la inocencia. El humor se entremezcla con algunos episodios completamente horribles, en los que poco a poco se deja entrever que todo es tan normal como creemos.
Hacia el final de la novela, el tono cambia notablemente y nos encontramos, casi sin creerlo, ante un giro sobrenatural que nos arrastra hasta el final, como si la novela tuviera prisa por terminar o, simplemente, no hay marcha atrás. La mezcla perfecta de la voz de Alice, los sucesos de una chica joven sin casar en una sociedad tan oscura y decadente y el giro gótico de la segunda mitad de la novela hacen de The Vet's Daughter una novela original, sencilla y completa a la vez. Como se dice en la introducción de mi edición: "there hasn't been a good original English novel since The Vet's Daughter". No sé si será verdad, pero a mí me ha sorprendido, y para bien.
La voz de Alice, una chica de diecisiete años que vive con sus padres en una casa en los suburbios del Londres eduardiano que a su vez hace de clínica veterinaria para su padre, nos lleva de la mano hacia la opresión que se vive en su entorno a través de los ojos de la inocencia. El humor se entremezcla con algunos episodios completamente horribles, en los que poco a poco se deja entrever que todo es tan normal como creemos.
Hacia el final de la novela, el tono cambia notablemente y nos encontramos, casi sin creerlo, ante un giro sobrenatural que nos arrastra hasta el final, como si la novela tuviera prisa por terminar o, simplemente, no hay marcha atrás. La mezcla perfecta de la voz de Alice, los sucesos de una chica joven sin casar en una sociedad tan oscura y decadente y el giro gótico de la segunda mitad de la novela hacen de The Vet's Daughter una novela original, sencilla y completa a la vez. Como se dice en la introducción de mi edición: "there hasn't been a good original English novel since The Vet's Daughter". No sé si será verdad, pero a mí me ha sorprendido, y para bien.
March 17, 2019
Yet another neglected little book that should enjoy a wider readership, this is a story sprung stream-of-consciousness-style from the mind of narrator Alice Rowlands.
A snapshot of a specific time and place, Alice is buffeted along by the whims and desires of those around her. She has no agency, no way to express her own wants and needs. Though she has a rich interior life she shares with the reader, she can only bend to the will of her domineering and oppressive father, his flighty and ill-tempered girlfriend, a well-meaning but imperceptive suitor, and others.
What makes this story so compulsively readable is the strong undercurrent of bleakness and dread—you just know that things are going to go horribly wrong, you just don’t know when.
The story is so grounded in reality, from the harsh but realistic world of Alice’s father’s trade as a veterinarian, to the disturbing realities about how women were not always (and perhaps rarely) seen as people, that when there is a turn toward the fantastic, it is shocking but also strangely inevitable and just so triumphant.
A true feminist tale, one with great soul that offers the reader more than just a story, but something to believe in.
A snapshot of a specific time and place, Alice is buffeted along by the whims and desires of those around her. She has no agency, no way to express her own wants and needs. Though she has a rich interior life she shares with the reader, she can only bend to the will of her domineering and oppressive father, his flighty and ill-tempered girlfriend, a well-meaning but imperceptive suitor, and others.
What makes this story so compulsively readable is the strong undercurrent of bleakness and dread—you just know that things are going to go horribly wrong, you just don’t know when.
The story is so grounded in reality, from the harsh but realistic world of Alice’s father’s trade as a veterinarian, to the disturbing realities about how women were not always (and perhaps rarely) seen as people, that when there is a turn toward the fantastic, it is shocking but also strangely inevitable and just so triumphant.
A true feminist tale, one with great soul that offers the reader more than just a story, but something to believe in.
February 19, 2022
I really cannot describe how much I love barbara comyns. Every time I even see one of her books resting on a counter in my house I break into a smile, she’s such a genius, I’ve never seen someone take the familiar into the unfamiliar in such a beautiful and exhilarating way, and I wish more people had heard of her. Every time I read another book by her I think it might be my favorite. I wish I could read this one over and over again, and I wish I could read it backwards and upside down too
November 20, 2014
A strange, Gothic novel which I found unexpected, dark and fantastic. A clear and vivid narration by Alice that was totally gripping. I could not stop reading. A very original book with some qualities of a macabre fairy-tale. I loved it!
July 17, 2018
5 stars for the ending in particular - which is like something out of Angela Carter
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