Scan barcode
A review by oldenglishrose
The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
4.0
The Vet’s Daughter tells the story of Alice, the eponymous vet’s daughter, who lives in an unfashionable area of London with her irritable, brusque, cruel father, her timid, suffering mother and a whole menagerie of animals. Following a series of traumatic occurrences in her life, Alice discovers that she has the ability to levitate and things appear to improve for her: she moves to rural Hampshire to act as companion to a frail lady and finally begins to enjoy herself away from the tyranny of her father. However, this cannot last for long and soon she finds herself even worse off than before.
The novel is written in the first person from Alice’s perspective, in prose that is spare and bleak with not a single word being wasted and no event without significance at some point in the novel. The starkness of the writing makes the terrible things that happen stand out because they are reported in such a mundane way. The straightforward nature of these simple statements makes it seem as though these situations are usual, and my heart went out to Alice every time I read something like this that she should think that the case. Her voice is lost and sorrowful, a child trying to make sense of an adult world which is cruel and confusing, and at times it is almost painful to read. There are brief flashes of happiness, but these are fleeting and serve only to provide glimpses of what the reader quickly suspects Alice will never be able to attain. These pleasant experiences are always cut off prematurely.
Although she is the narrator, Alice has no agency in this sad little novel: things happen to her and all she can do is talk about them to the reader. Her power goes no further than little things, such as rescuing a woodlouse from the fire with a teaspoon, and that makes this actions seem all the more poignant and significant. There are times when she appears to be able to exercise her own will, but this is swiftly undermined as Alice is brought back down to where she started. Her lack of ability to act makes her seem somehow detached from the events of the novel, as though she is disconnected from them even though they happen to her. This detachment is manifested in Alice’s levitation, which Comyns handles very skillfully. I like the way that at first it is impossible to say whether Alice really floats in the air or whether it is just her imagination protecting her mind from things that have happened to her. Even so, told in the same style of prose as the rest of the novel, her levitation comes across as simple fact and I accepted it without question.
Even Alice’s levitation goes from being something that she can control at will to something that she must do at the will of others and so it is in many ways emblematic of her position in the novel. It’s not just a silly device to add interest or get around awkward plot problems (my issue with a lot of magical realism) but an integral part of the book which is vital to the tragic yet inevitable ending.
The novel is written in the first person from Alice’s perspective, in prose that is spare and bleak with not a single word being wasted and no event without significance at some point in the novel. The starkness of the writing makes the terrible things that happen stand out because they are reported in such a mundane way. The straightforward nature of these simple statements makes it seem as though these situations are usual, and my heart went out to Alice every time I read something like this that she should think that the case. Her voice is lost and sorrowful, a child trying to make sense of an adult world which is cruel and confusing, and at times it is almost painful to read. There are brief flashes of happiness, but these are fleeting and serve only to provide glimpses of what the reader quickly suspects Alice will never be able to attain. These pleasant experiences are always cut off prematurely.
Although she is the narrator, Alice has no agency in this sad little novel: things happen to her and all she can do is talk about them to the reader. Her power goes no further than little things, such as rescuing a woodlouse from the fire with a teaspoon, and that makes this actions seem all the more poignant and significant. There are times when she appears to be able to exercise her own will, but this is swiftly undermined as Alice is brought back down to where she started. Her lack of ability to act makes her seem somehow detached from the events of the novel, as though she is disconnected from them even though they happen to her. This detachment is manifested in Alice’s levitation, which Comyns handles very skillfully. I like the way that at first it is impossible to say whether Alice really floats in the air or whether it is just her imagination protecting her mind from things that have happened to her. Even so, told in the same style of prose as the rest of the novel, her levitation comes across as simple fact and I accepted it without question.
Even Alice’s levitation goes from being something that she can control at will to something that she must do at the will of others and so it is in many ways emblematic of her position in the novel. It’s not just a silly device to add interest or get around awkward plot problems (my issue with a lot of magical realism) but an integral part of the book which is vital to the tragic yet inevitable ending.