Daughter

A Novel

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Pub Date 12 Sep 2023 | Archive Date 31 Oct 2023

Description

A Must-Read: The New York Times, Elle, Literary Hub, The Millions, The Globe and Mail, and CBC
Long-listed for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction

“[A] darkly glittering tale . . . Beautiful and piercing.” The New York Times Book Review

In Claudia Dey’s Daughter, a woman long caught in her father’s web strives to make a life—and art—of her own.

To be loved by your father is to be loved by God.

So says Mona Dean—playwright, actress, and daughter of a man famous for one great novel, a man whose needs and insecurities exert an inescapable pull and exact an immeasurable toll on the women of his family: Mona, her sister, her half sister, their mothers. His infidelity destroyed Mona’s childhood, setting her in opposition to a stepmother who, though equally damaged, disdains her for being broken. Then, just as Mona is settling into her life as an adult and a fledgling artist, her father begins a new affair and takes her into his confidence. Mona delights—painfully, parasitically—in this attention. When he inevitably confesses to his wife, Mona is cast as the agent of disruption, punished for her father’s crimes and ejected from the family.

Mona’s tenuous stability is thrown into chaos. Only when she suffers an incalculable loss—one far deeper and more defining than family entanglements—can she begin supplanting absent love with real love. Pushed to the precipice, she must decide how she wants to live, what she most needs to say, and the risks she will take to say it.

Claudia Dey chronicles our most intimate lives with penetrating insight and devilish humor. Daughter is an obsessive, blazing examination of the forces that drive us to become, to create, and to break free.

A Must-Read: The New York Times, Elle, Literary Hub, The Millions, The Globe and Mail, and CBC
Long-listed for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction

“[A] darkly glittering tale . . . Beautiful and...


A Note From the Publisher

Claudia Dey’s novel Heartbreaker was a Paris Review Staff Pick, a Goop Book Club Pick, a Globe & Mail, Buzzfeed, and CBC Book of the Year, a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Her plays have been produced internationally and nominated for many awards, including the Governor General. Claudia has written for The Believer, McSweeney’s, Literary Hub, Hazlitt, and The Paris Review. She is co-founder and co-designer of the clothing label, Horses Atelier.

Claudia Dey’s novel Heartbreaker was a Paris Review Staff Pick, a Goop Book Club Pick, a Globe & Mail, Buzzfeed, and CBC Book of the Year, a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Her plays have been...


Advance Praise

“This novel conveys, in a controlled, lucid and elegant manner, the confusions and longings of a daughter whose father only knows how to relate to women as romantic objects. The dynamics between him, her husband, and her vain stepmother, provide a taut and tense narrative about the quest for individuality and connection. It’s also a formally inventive book—while still being deeply accessible—about how much we can know about others, and how well we can know ourselves. Claudia Dey describes feelings and struggles I haven't encountered in other novels. I loved this beautiful book.” —Sheila Heti, author of Pure Colour

Daughter is a breathtaking and brilliant novel about the exquisite pain and agony that comes from loving and needing certain people in our lives to love us back, to love us better. It is also about how we are relentless animals, wild and searching, trying to get our crushed, hungry bodies into our wolf packs. I loved this beautifully written book and was profoundly moved by it, so uncompromising and so true.” —Miriam Toews, author of Fight Night

“In Daughter, Claudia Dey writes beautifully about the special claustrophobia of family and how it can rearrange both art and life.” —Raven Leilani, author of Luster

“I am a huge fan of Claudia Dey’s and I will go wherever she takes me with her prose—always elegant, yet brimming with colour and sharpness, it never fails to breathe new life. I loved Daughter in all its gorgeous power.” —Sophie Mackintosh, author of Blue Ticket

Daughter is so true to how life feels in its brief bursts and flash cuts. The spare and electric prose is like birds alighting on a single tree, making sense of the 50,000 directions they have come from. I gasped. I teared up. This book entered my soul. Daughter is about where we are bound and where we are free. It is original, seductive and so alive. It is always moving forward. Claudia Dey is a phenomenal and profound writer, and with Daughter, she has drawn a perfect circle.” —Leslie Feist, musician

Daughter reads like a thrilling fever dream. Claudia Dey has figured out the recipe for a novel that becomes a climate, as immersive, honest, and addictive as family.” —Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Parakeet

“This novel conveys, in a controlled, lucid and elegant manner, the confusions and longings of a daughter whose father only knows how to relate to women as romantic objects. The dynamics between him...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780374609702
PRICE $27.00 (USD)
PAGES 272

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Average rating from 24 members


Featured Reviews

DAUGHTER is hands down one of the best books I've read so far this year.

It's a heartbreaking story about family---how difficult it is to escape certain ties, or to have other ties severed without being given the opportunity to mend them. At the center of the novel is a family of artists, a family that fractures. But the most fascinating relationship is that between Mona and her father Paul. She loathes Paul, yet cannot manage to escape him. Wants to be his best-friend and confidante, yet Paul is disagreeable, to say the least. At the same time, Mona is navigating various other traumas---some pages were harrowing, difficult to read. But as a whole, DAUGHTER shines.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley!

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"To be loved by your father is to be loved by God."

Wow. What an amazing book. It's about the relationship between a father and daughter, one that is very deep and intellectual and maybe a bit codependent. It starts with Mona being confided by Paul, her dad, that he is having an affair. During this time they become really close, and after Paul confessed to Cherry, his wife, Paul is forgiven and ghosts Mona. We witness Mona falling into a depression that may or may not be related to his father's mindlessness.

There is so much going on at all times and sometimes that annoys me, but with this book I didn't mind because the writing is exceptional. I couldn't get enough of it. Definitely worth checking out trigger warnings before starting it. Personally, I felt strongly related to Mona because I'm also really close to my dad and he has always treated me like an adult, making me feel that he listens and cares for anything I have to say. I could also relate to the codependency it can arise when the relationship becomes very intellectual and can be forgotten that we're not peers, we're father and daughter.

A masterpiece, in my opinion. I'm sure I will keep thinking about it for a while.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the e-arc.

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The plot is: a family is dysfunctional. Just like yours!

The more important part: Dey writes in a style that is often attempted and much more rarely successful: a hazy, near stream of consciousness, packed with metaphor hypnotic dreamscape that is lovely even when harrowing. Her style is simultaneously revealing and concealing, letting you see the humanity and intentions of her characters, but only for a moment. Very beautiful.

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