The daughter of a bullying veterinary surgeon, Alice Rowlands lives in the oppressive world of Edwardian south London. In her own vivid uneducated words, she here relates the story of her girlhood and the growth of her fatal occult powers.
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Book Description
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
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About the Author
Barbara Comyns was born in Warwickshire in 1909. She worked in advertising, dealt in old cars and antiques, bred poodles, and developed property. She and her second husband lived in Spain for eighteen years. Comyns died in 1992.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Immortal Book,
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,
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,
By Seattle Reader (Washington) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
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.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
A MAN WITH small eyes and a ginger moustache came and spoke to me when I was thinking of something else. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Miss Fisher, Rosa Fisher, Miss Thomas, The Trumpet, Henry Peebles, Clapham Common, Earl's Court, High Street, Miss Alice New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
A MAN WITH small eyes and a ginger moustache came and spoke to me when I was thinking of something else. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Miss Fisher, Rosa Fisher, Miss Thomas, The Trumpet, Henry Peebles, Clapham Common, Earl's Court, High Street, Miss Alice New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 83
books:
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4
books
cite this book:
- Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (New York Review Books Classics) by Daniel Paul Schreber in Back Matter
- The Other House (New York Review Books) by Henry James in Back Matter
- The Waste Books (New York Review Books Classics) by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg in Back Matter
- My Life? by A. F. Carr in Back Matter
- On the Yard (New York Review Books Classics) by Malcolm Braly in Back Matter
See all 83 books this book cites
- The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English by Lorna Sage on page 146
- The Oxford Chronology of English Literature on page 457
- The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English by Jenny Stringer on page 135
- The Oxford Chronology of English Literature by Michael Cox on page 721
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