Customer Reviews

A Bigamist's Daughter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book had such potential, but the characters were so static and did not develop or mature in any way throughout the novel. I was very disappointed in the protagonist's unemotional responses to emotional situations and subjects. McDermott does have a beautiful style of writing, but she did not take these characters to the level that she could have. The ending was anti-climatic and frustrating.

I am so sick of this character. How many - single women in their 20's who live on their own in a big city with powerful careers and no life outside of it, who are independent enough to have sex and not care, yet can't focus on anything else except sex and love - do I have to read about? I was this woman for a good number of years, but I had a lot more going on in my life. Please - SOMEBODY give these characters some dimension.

Elizabeth Connelly works for a Manhattan vanity press. When Tupper Daniels, a sure-to-be-published author presents her with the story of a bigamist in his southern hometown, she jokingly kids that her own father had more than one wife.

Tupper's book lacks an ending, and Elizabeth seriously considers whether her father was indeed a bigamist. Together author and editor forge a relationship to search for the end of one story and the truth of another. I reached the end of A BIGAMIST'S DAUGHTER without resolution to either quest. I'm not even sure what becomes of Tupper and Elizabeth, the couple.

As a story that describes itself as "an absolutely contemporary portrait of a new generation's search for--and avoidance of--committment in life and love," it's not a picture I would hang on a wall.

I received The Bigamist's Daughter as a gift as "anything written by Alice McDermott" was highly recommended by Anna Quindlen in a USA Today story. Although the writing is precise and flows, the story and the characters are not engaging. Elizabeth the main character seems to be sleep walking through her life, her affair and her job. I kept waiting for the story to click and I had to reread the final chapters to see what I was missing. It just wasn't there. No stars is a more accurate assessment of my review. Skip this book. I am going to try another of her titles since I got two as gifts. I will read another Isabel Alende and an Amy Tan and a Jane Austen in between.

In a novel that dissects, deconstructs and recreates the fabric of life, love and literature, the author spotlights the world of publishing; the mythology of love, the elusiveness of the love object - all as the centerpiece of this work - formulate the basis for this story.

We begin with Elizabeth Connelly, a single woman living in New York - some time in the twentieth century, before computers or the current Internet generation - and discover her real life as an "editor-in-chief" at what is known in that day as a "vanity press." She meets her potential authors, praises their work - even when it is less than stellar - and signs them to contracts. They pay their fee and dream their dreams.

But one day she meets an author - Tupper Daniels, a southern gentleman - and in helping him "create an ending" for his unfinished manuscript, she stumbles down a path of exploration that leads her into the surreal world of elusive fathers - traveling fathers like her own - who are leading secret lives. Questioning all the stories told her by her mother, and examining her own tendency to tell tales - even create myths - about her own past loves, she begins to understand that fantasies, illusions and love myths have a life of their own, flourishing because of the necessity to preserve those very myths.

Fascinating portrayal of love, literature, and the elusive nature of dreams, A Bigamist's Daughter is a memorable novel that earns five stars.

Laurel-Rain Snow

Generally Alice's writing makes me think and follow closely so as not to miss her little back-and-forths with her characters. I enjoy her writing style and story lines very much.

However, and a big however it is, this book had such a disappointing ending that I can't even recommend it in good conscience. More precisely, it had NOOO ending at all. The story started out with some direction but quickly lost it. The farther I read the more I wondered whose secrets we were going to uncover. In the end we uncovered nothing. She left us hanging here folks.

Tupper was horrible. His personality was as bland as his complexion. And arrogant??? What's the guy so proud of? Elizabeth could've been okay if she'd snapped out of her coma and decided to have any kind of life. Some points made in the book were interesting although incredibly glorifying to a batch of people who selfishly "commit" themselves to more than one partner. If you want more than one "wife" don't get married!! No offense intended but how can anyone ever call bigamy a moral alternative to cheating? Or at the least when all parties involved aren't privy to the set up? Doesn't that make it the same thing??

But hence I divert. The short version...good author, bad book. Skip this one and read something else she wrote if you want to give Alice a try.

"A Bigamist's Daughter" is the only book I've read this year that I really didn't like. I absolutely despise the narrator, a shallow, vacuous twit who does not resemble me nor most women I know. (Horrid to think any man would take her for a representative of the female sex.)

The plot is interesting, if not engaging, but the ending rings false and is terribly disappointing. Also, I found McDermott's description to be cruel in several places.

Readers looking for good contemporary female writers should skip McDermott and instead try Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Barbara Kingsolver or Katherine Weber.

I liked this so well, I've bought 5 copies as gifts. Illuminating look at family relationships, memory, story, integrity. Just when you think you have these characters figured out, there's an AHA! incident which you should have anticipated, but didn't. Has one of the best last lines in fiction. Her best work!

I must say that this is the first time I'm angry at myself for taking money out of my pocket to put it in someone else's. What a waste of my precious dollars and time. There was nothing appealing about this book--not the plot, the style nor the characters. Thumbs down.

At first I loved this story of an editor at a vanity publishing house as she wends her way through the deceptive and demeaning relationships with her authors, and specifically with one, who quickly (and foolishly, in my opinion) becomes her lover. But I soon became impatient with the characters and endless obsessing, condescension and duplicity. Despite her good writing style, McDermott's novels leave me with an unpleasant taste for her characters..