Customer Reviews

Yes, My Darling Daughter: A Novel

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

 

 

Grace is a single mom, who works in a flower shop full time, and spends her free time with Sylvie, her sweet little four year old daughter. The two live a simple life, in a not so great part of London, but their life seems happy enough. All seems perfectly normal with Sylvie until she begins having problems in preschool. She has outbursts, exhibits an extreme fear of water, and says odd things to her playmates. She also refuses to call her mother "mum", and always called her "Grace" instead. She also tells her mother that she does not like living where she does, and wants to go home.

Grace is not sure what to do about the way Sylvie has been behaving. She takes her to a therapist who tends to blame the behaviour on her lifestyle. One day while Sylvie is flipping through a magazine, she becomes fixated on a photo of an Irish fishing village called Coldharbour. Her response to the picture is :

"It's my seaside....I lived there...I lived in a little house, a white house....I had a cave and a dragon".

Is it possible Sylvie lived in a past life? Grace and Sylvie are invited by Adam, a university professor involved in the paranormal , to go to Ireland on a research grant, and see whether there is any merit to what Sylvie has been saying.

Part, mystery, part Gothic tale, Yes, My Darling Daughter, had me anxiously turning pages to find out how it would all end. Although things got wrapped up, just a little too neatly, I still really enjoyed this book. I loved that it really held my interest, and that I was able to read it in one day.

RECOMMENDED.

Now that I've finished this book, all I feel is aggravated that I wasted time on it. I got it from Oprah's Book Club recommendations, which I'm usually very pleased with. And note, I'm a very open-minded reader. I go into all books thinking I'll learn something, love it, or both. I read all kinds of fictions and non-fictions.

This book was amature. The writing was mediocre. The author tried to jazz it up with some unneccessary eroticism, which, frankly, was just weird. The whole book basically said the same thing over and over.

The end, where you think you'll finally get the pay-off for suffering though this ridiculous book, is a disappointment (at best). The wrap-up, the solving of the mystery is.. stupid, almost.

I can't believe Oprah recommended this book. I can't believe it has 4 and 5 star ratings. Trust me, unless you're 12-year-old Sci-fi fanatic, you won't like this book.

Margaret Leroy delves into a fascinating subject this novel, that of past lives and how a delicate four-year-old girl is life is irrevocably affected by an event that happened over a decade ago. Full of brittle and fragile detail, Leroy's gorgeous prose, captures the struggling angst of Grace Reynolds as she struggles to raise her four-year-old daughter Sylvie. Sylvie, an only child, enjoys the complete attention of Grace, her father Dominic unwilling to acknowledge her, more concerned with his own family excluding both grace and Sylvie. At a party for Lennie, Sylvie's best friend, suddenly and unexpectedly, there's a commotion. Water is everywhere, a scrabble of boys near the bowl, and Sylvie screaming, and then Grace's sense of dread. While brittle body is wracked with tension, the reason for her outbursts, her sadness and crying and her fear is unexplainable at best, the sense that there's something about Sylvie that is utterly beyond Grace. More worrying is Sylvie's strange phobia of water and a house she draws over and over with a blue border and the doors and windows always just the same. And of course there's the perpetual nightmares even as she comes into Grace's room. The sounds of her sobbing tugging at her, hauling Grace up from the surface of her dreams, the thoughts of life with Dominic "constantly dancing in the margins of her mind."

Grace seems to be battered and buffeted on all fronts. As she goes home to her empty and cold flat in Highlands, she ekes out a living working in a flower shop only her boss Lavinia offers her kindness, an old hippy with her willow wands and patchwork scraps of fabric, who tells Grace that only she knows what's right for Sylvie. Even the staff at Sylvie's nursery, just can't control the little girl, the stern and a little distant Mrs. Pace-Barden constantly complaining to grace about Sylvie's the constant temper tantrums. This first part of this tale, in particular, perfectly captures, Grace's sense of restriction she had of walls that press in whichever way she turns, the surging of frustration and the sense of this life unfolding before her, this unraveling of everything she's tried to knit together: "The patching up and making do."

Grace is desperate for more information about Sylvie, the answers appearing in a newspaper article, with stories of ghosts and that of Dr. Adam Winters, who investigates psychic phenomenon and who is in turn haunted by the accident that caused the death of his brother. As Grace finally recounts a sad confession to Adam : "it's like Sylvie's slipping away from me. It's like she doesn't see me or recognize me," both Grace and Adam travel to the small seaside Irish village of Coldharbour looking for answers, a hint of meaning, Adam wanting to find a way of living with his brother's death while Grace searches for answers. Leroy plunges us into her sad, haunting, and melancholy tale that moves from the dark days of London with the raw, searching wind, its smells of smoke and petrol fumes to Coldharbour, the lobster boats, the salt wind and the jetty, the sense of space. Grace pours out her bent-up frustrations, and Sylvie her accumulated emotions, in language so evocative that so much air, all the vastness of the place, the sky, the sea is almost corporeal. While Sylvie constantly seems to be eluding Grace, it is her almost spiritual connection to Alice Murphy and her daughter Jessica who suddenly disappeared, that tie the threads of this plot together along the painful acknowledgement that we are all mortal beings, that life is incomplete and where so much never gets said, so much left unfinished and broken. Mike Leonard April 08.

I think that overall this is a great book. I was thoroughly entertained. I couldn't put the book down ....especially in the final chapters. However, the story was very predictable. I for the most part knew what would happen by the middle of the novel. The book reminds me of one of those movies where you know the ending because you are shown it but you still watch in suspense as the story unfolds. There aren't many surprises in the novel but it will still keep you in suspense.

I love this type of story, and this one started out strong even though by one-third of the way through, I started to develop a dislike for Grace. I realize she is young, but I found it irritating how every man was a potential romantic interest. Seems to me if I had that many problems with my four-year old, romance would be the last thing on my mind. I found her obsession with Dominic even more frustrating after what he did to her.

The storyline was good, but the wrap-up was weak. What was worse was, it didn't have to be. I thought of several much more plausible endings that still left the reincarnation aspect intact but less far-fetched and much more believable.

I loved this book. The little girl, Sylvie, was spooky, but very vulnerable, and my heart was fully engaged. Her mother, Grace, too was a vulnerable, single-mother with many problems--after 3 years, she still love her child's father, even though he has never seen Sylvie, and has rejected both of them. He's married and much older than Grace (seduced her when she was 18). Grace is poor and lives in a bad part of town (London). And, above all, she has her hands full with. Sylvie is a beautiful, but strange child. Sylvie has "tantrums," which other mothers think only require that Grace apply a bit of discipline and boundary-setting. But, Grace knows there is much more to it than that, but can't seem to find help for her little girl, whose getting worse. When Sylvie's kicked out of the nursery (she's only 3 years old), and after consulting with a psychiatrist, and having no place else to turn, she seeks out a psychologist whose been written about in the newspaper--he investigates situations where children may be remembering past lives, lives that have ended tragically. So, the suspense begins.

This was such a haunting, eerily suspenseful novel. Those seem to be hard to come by these days. I haven't read anything as good on this subject since the "Reincarnation of Peter Proud." I couldn't put it down.

Though the book that I read has a different title and cover, it is the same book. Though, I think that the title on my book is better. (Drowning Girl)

The prologue gives away a lot of the story. Even though I figured out most of the ending by the middle of the book, it doesn't take away from it. It just made me read faster, because I wanted the characters to find out what I did.

Grace and Sylvie are mother and daughter, living in London. Grace is a single mum, the father of Sylvie already married with a family. Grace has a lot of guilt over this, and thinks that her lack of family has been causing problems, especially since Sylvie has been having bad dreams, biting children at the nursery, and has an intense fear of water. She constantly draws the same house over and over and claims that she once lived there.

Even though Grace's friends and therapists think that Grace is the problem, Grace thinks that there is something else going on. Why is Sylvie so wise, beyond her four years? Why does Sylvie insist on calling her mum, "Grace?" Why does she make the claim that she misses her family and her home?

One day, as they are making collages, Grace cuts out a picture of a seaside town, and Sylvie insists that she lived there. Grace enlists the help of a psychology professor, who is interested in the paranormal for his own personal reasons, and they set out on a quest to find the answer to Sylvie's problem.

How far would you go to help your child, as crazy as the idea seems? They stumble upon a mystery that was never solved, a family torn apart by a loss, and the answers to their questions.

This book consumed me. There are times when I hurry through the book because I hate it, and then there are times like these that I do the same because I want to know what happens. I stay up late in the night reading, and I finish the book in a couple of sittings. I'm so grateful to the person on bookcrossing who lent it to me, otherwise, I may not have ever read it. Also, the descriptions of Ireland were so detailed and realistic, I could swear that I was there again. Even more amazing is the fact that the author said she wrote the descriptions while using a guide book. The authors writing is also so haunting because I could feel the loneliness of the characters, all of those that were missing something, and those that wanted to connect with another.

Ignore the cover and the title (My edition has a little blonde girl wearing red, solemnly looking out the window as you see her reflection in it) and read a great book!

This is a book about a child recalling a past life and how it impacts this life and those around her.
The subject has always fascinatead me however, this book leaves too much to be desired. I had trouble staying with it. The author repeats herself way too much consequently giving the book a feel of a slow moving car you want to get out and push down a hill. The mother character is weak, lost in the loneliness of the past and her affair with the married man that created Silvie. Of course, he is no longer in the picture. No surprises there. All in all, with stronger characters, stepping up the pace and better descriptive writing on the location this could have been a better read. Enough said!

I loved this book and devoured it quickly from cover to cover. It was just a bit predictable in places, but I never would have guessed who "Lennie" was. I would have liked to have read more about Lennie and Sylvie once this was revealed, including more about a connection between them. If this was real, Sylvie would have been labeled as "emotionally disturbed," but I'm glad the mother in this book was open to exploring the reasons for Sylvie's behaviors. I can't say everything that I'd like to say about this book because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I would definitely read more books by this author. Please note that this is the same book as "The Drowning Girl," the title it was published under in the U.K. Though this was supposedly the U.S. version, I wonder if it's exactly the same because a lot of the language was what would be used in the U.K.

Young single mum Grace struggles to make life work but her daughter Sylvie's odd and volatile behavior isolates the pair. Could be just a little girl with behavior issues and an overwhelmed mum, as everyone around them seems to think. Feeling the world closing in, Grace snatches at one last straw--a psychologist who claims to elicit memories of past lives from troubled children.

Margaret Leroy keeps Grace and Sylvie's world just a little off kilter. Yes, My Darling Daughter has been compared to Rebecca--Leroy invokes a very similar brooding vague unease. We're not always sure things are what we think, or of what's around any corner.

The serviceable murder mystery plot holds up its end well enough. There are some cliché elements and that inevitable point in the story where the reader wants to yell at the main characters, "Don't walk right into the trap!" But these are not major flaws.

Throughout, Grace's determination to do whatever it takes to help her cold and rather unlovable little girl kept this reader rooting for them both. Now I'm rooting for another book from Leroy soon.