The Vet's Daughter (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

Barbara Comyns (Author), Kathryn Davis (Introduction) (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2003 | Series: New York Review Books Classics

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I’d like also to recommend The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns, which hit me like a dangerous drug earlier this year: one of the best books I’ve ever read." --Wesley Stace, The Believer

About the Author

Barbara Comyns (1909–1992) was born in Bidford-on-Avon, in the English county of Warwickshire, one of six children of an increasingly unsuccessful Birmingham brewer. Living on the run-down but romantic family estate and receiving her education from governesses, she began to write and illustrate stories at the age of ten. After her father’s death, she attended art school in London and married a painter, with whom she had two children she supported by trading antiques and classic cars, modeling, breeding poodles, and renovating apartments. A second marriage, to Richard Comyns Carr, who worked in the Foreign Office, took place during World War II. Comyns wrote her first book, Sisters by the River (1947), a series of sketches based on her childhood, while living in the country to escape the Blitz, which is also when she made an initial sketch for The Vet’s Daughter. This, however, she put aside to complete Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (1950), about her first marriage, and Who was Changed and Who was Dead (1955). The Vet’s Daughter was published in 1959. Among Barbara Comyns’s other books are the novels The Skin Chairs (1962) and The Juniper Tree (1985), and Out of the Blue into the Red (1960), a work of nonfiction about Spain, where she lived for eighteen years.

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (April 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590170296
• ISBN-13: 978-1590170298
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Immortal Book, January 2, 2007

By 

Ruby Petunia (San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vet's Daughter (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Neo-Gothic Classic, November 9, 2011

By 

Bill Corporandy (Yuba City, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vet's Daughter (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite books. I have read 2 of Comyn's other novels and enjoyed them but I prefer this one by a wide margin. A previous viewer has compared her to Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and Penelope Fitzgerald. I see the legitimacy of the Fitzgerald comparison and especially the similarity to Bowen but not so much the Woolf comparison. I am sure there is legitimacy to her opinion but would urge readers of these reviews not to be put off if you are not a Woolf fan. I do not like Woolf but love Comyns. Her style is strange, nightmarish, gothic, and yet grimly realistic in many ways. I do not think it is a plot wrecker to mention that early on we see that this sad young girl has the gift of levitation. I guarantee you will never forget this book's vivid characters, atmosphere, and plot. By the way, another excellent novel involving levitation is Paul Auster's Mr. Vertigo.

5.0 out of 5 stars Weird & Wonderful, April 21, 2011

By 

Seattle Reader (Washington) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Vet's Daughter (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

The writing in this book is so strange and vivid... reading this small book left me breathless. It starts out as a small story about a wretched girl and her horrible upbringing, then becomes kind of a fantasy, which I didn't so much care for. But still, the whole book is so original that I have recommended it to a bunch of friends.