A review by kali
Daughters of the House by Michèle Roberts

3.0

The set up of this novel was suspenseful and reeled me in until about two-thirds through, when it seemed to peter out and offered little resolution or answers. Therese returns to the family home after 20 years as a cloistered nun, to find her cousin Leonie ensconced as lady of the manor. Leonie bristles with such hostility towards her, I was hooked, wondering what the hell Therese had done to deserve such shabby treatment. Most of the story then retells their teenage years when Leonie comes to stay from her home in England, Therese's mum dies, and the local farmer boy Baptiste initiates Leonie into secual maturity. Therese is a holier-than-thou bitch. She steals Leonie's visions of the Virgin Mary at a village shrine in the forest, and becomes the local priest's pet protege. The attention given to the shrine, however, uncovers the awful events during world war 2 when Jewish refugees were betrayed in the village and killed alongside Baptiste's father, who had been harbouring them. This is not a spoiler -- this event is openly referred to. The identity of the one who betrayed them, though, is kept to the end, and really feels meaningless tacked on, as it is. There are no consequences or ramifications of this revelation, it doesn't change how the cousins relate to each other, in fact, I don't even know for certain the reason why the cousins feel like they relate to each other the way they do.