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A Family Daughter
 
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A Family Daughter (Paperback)

by Maile Meloy (Author)
2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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A Family Daughter + Liars and Saints + Half in Love
Price For All Three: £20.17

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Product details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: John Murray (8 Mar 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0719566479
  • ISBN-13: 978-0719566479
  • Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 455,586 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Time Out
Praise for LIARS AND SAINTS:

'A terrific read' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

‘With its humour, athletic sex and explosive secrets, A FAMILY DAUGHTER is the delinquent offspring of LIARS AND SAINTS, and deserves similar success’

(Daily Mail )

Book of the month: ' You can’t help but be caught up by Meloy’s enthralling storytelling which alternates between dramatic narrative swoops and tiny moments of emotional acuity. A truly original piece of work, (it) establishes Meloy as a writer with an imaginative territory as distinctive and finely worked as that of Anne Tyler’

(Marie Claire )

'The new book is better than the first, but it's hard to separate them. Ms. Meloy's reflections on truth and fiction are best appreciated when the two novels collide. . . A FAMILY DAUGHTER roams engrossingly from California to Paris to Buenos Aires in ways that make it a big book as well as a swift, slender, graceful one . . . This new book has the deep ramifications of more ambitious fiction'

(New York Times )

'[Meloy] . . . writes wonderfully well, with an efficiency so lithe it’s like watching an athlete’

(Guardian )

‘A deliciously duplicitous book, a darkly perceptive examination of American mores disguised as a light family romance.’

(Sunday Telegraph (Seven) )

'A great weekend read'

(Vogue )

'Both compassionate and gripping, A FAMILY DAUGHTER is a wonderful piece of fiction'

 

(Books Quarterly (Waterstone's) )

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars carrying her private sense of disaster , 21 April 2006
By M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: A Family Daughter (Hardcover)
An uncle who sleeps with his niece, a mother who won't commit to her daughter, and a matriarch who looks back at her family and wonders why they are all so eccentric, wayward and willful. In A Family Daughter, author Maile Meloy returns to the Santerres family, telling her story from the perspective of Clarissa's daughter Abby who is about to attend university in San Diego.

Beautiful, confused and sensual, Abby is also emotional and complicated. She visits a therapist to try and make sense of her life, and has a close relationship with Ben, her father. But when Ben is killed in a car accident, Abby is set adrift - her mother, Clarissa is too distant and self-involved to take that much of an interest in her. Shaken to the core, she falls in love with her Uncle Jamie, a supportive influence since she was seven years old.

Of course, there's a question over whether Jamie is really Abby's uncle, but they're so hot for each other that they begin sleeping together. Abby also begins to write a novel about a Catholic family keeping secrets from each other. It's ostensibly a work of fiction, but it's also a thinly disguised veil of her own family, and it allows the major players to seek out part of their pasts, each attempting to find their own way.

A Family Daughter is richly plotted and multi-layered and it keeps constantly diverging, introducing characters existing in the periphery of the Santerres' lives; at one stage, the narrative even switches gears to Argentina. There's a spoilt countess, a devious Hungarian prostitute, and a calculating French lawyer, with Meloy always contrasting these points of view, exposing the miscommunications, disappointments and expectations of this family and the people that fall within their radar.

Teddy, the patriarch, with his ailing eyesight and declining health wonders why his family make the kind of decisions they do and choose to live errant lives. An old style Catholic father, his beliefs made him rigid - he wonders why Jamie hadn't settled down the way he expected, and that his daughters lives were not what he wanted for them, "we all knew in all of these cases that he hoped that things would turn out differently," Teddy represents the old guard, wanting what is understandable and morally unambiguous and not filled with strife, "to trust Go and sow faith and Love."

At the novel's end, none of the characters ever really achieve Teddy's wishes: Clarissa remains capricious and selfish, the bored Margot reconnects with an old flame and throws herself into an affair, handsome Jamie marries for convenience not love, and the lovely Abby remains baffled at her family's dysfunctions and contradictions.

While A Family Daughter isn't as tightly plotted and as realistic as its prequel Liars and Saints, the novel is still an unusual examination of a modern American family in crisis, "a crazy invented family." The problem with a second novel is that it must prolong the curiosity of the first, move the story along and also keep the characters from becoming dull. For those who enjoyed Liars and Saints, this novel is certainly an excellent connection to past characters as well as bridging the gap to the next generation. The good news is that A Family Daughter also works as a stand-alone novel; it's a compelling portrait of a family where faith, God and logic sit uneasily side by side. Mike Leonard April 06.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Ridiculous story, 25 Oct 2008
By Maureen M. Rich "moerich" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Possibly if the reader had not read Liars and Saint they might have found some redeeming features to this lazily contrived novel. The introduction I read said "in her second book she continues with their story, but with a very different angle". This book is not a continuation of the family's story but rather a rewriting of the first story, with a few different scenarios thrown in, as well as some ridiculous sub plots. Apparently the author did not have a second novel in her so she just reworded her first one....
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