Reviews for The Vet's Daughter

The average rating for The Vet's Daughter based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-05-09 00:00:00 Peter Carr 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.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-03-16 00:00:00 Jason Cannon While 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.