This was an intriguing book. It definitely won’t be for everyone but I liked it overall. The prose is spare in such a languid way that I almost found it hypnotic.

This is a story about a messy family estranged from each other, their toxic relationships, and a story about art and the women behind the male gaze. Paul is an author famous for his novel Daughter, who left his first family for a woman who could offer him security and comfort but who he could never love.

He has an affair with his young assistant and uses his first daughter Mona, confiding in her and manipulating her, in a way that will change their two families forever. Paul, in turn, is really a mediocre author, whose sentences were made beautiful by his first wife, Natasha, also his editor, who gave up a writing career to raise their two children; and who Paul always took for granted.

I found the head-bopping in this story a confusing stylistic choice. It moves between Mona’s first person point of view and the third person point of view of the other family members. I understood why the author did it but it felt like a gimmick, like the author was just trying to be edgy. I could never quite figure out who the main character or narrator was.

Also there was a bit of info dumping that got kind of dull to read in parts when the family wasn’t speaking and just communicating by email.

Normally I’m not a fan of messy family stories but other than those issues I found the characters and their motivations fascinating and very well developed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A twisted tale of family, manipulation and obligation, Daughter is the title of this book and also the famous book written by Paul in the novel. A famous writer, who hasn’t published since his successful novel Daughter, Paul is a man with complicated relationships with his daughters, his current wife, and his lover. The implosion of his family begins with the end of his affair with his publicist Lee, who his daughter Mona heard all about. Mona is the main narrator of the novel, though there are several third person passages about the other characters.

Mona is cut out of her sister Eva’s life following the affair, and so a years-long battle begins, coming to the surface after years of tension. Cherry, Paul’s current wife has always treated Mona and Juliet, Paul’s daughters from his first marriage, poorly, and the novel is concerned with their manipulations and betrayals of one another, always circling the person whose actions are usually the cause of the rift, Paul.

This was a fascinating family story, full of anger and pain, but also about the ways we imagine other people react to us. Dey’s writing is deft and cold, revealing the ways we hurt one another.

An interesting exercise on father and daughter relationships as well as nepotism. The people who are estranged in the main character's life also serve a purpose in understanding connection. The writing is poetic as much as it is watching an ice pick work through a block of ice. The structure was also interesting. Big paragraphs, Lots of one lines. Not many chapters. This book is also not politically correct yet has a purpose as well.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. This is such a fascinating book about a writer named Paul who writes one extremely popular novel and then doesn’t publish for decades. What Paul has done since is leave his first wife and two daughters and married a rich and wildly controlling woman named Cherry. The story is mostly told from the point of Mona, an aspiring actress and playwright that Paul left behind. Mona is constantly drawn to and held off of her father’s affections. In a typical scenario, Mona becomes Paul’s confidant about his affair and then when the affair is exposed, Paul is somehow forgiven, while Mona is banished for keeping everything a secret. The story covers decades of loves and betrayals as everyone spins in and out of Paul’s orbit.