Daughter

by Claudia Dey

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 to a man famous for one great novel, 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, he 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.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Family, Canada, Book Club, Novels

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Claudia Dey is a bestselling novelist, playwright and essayist.

Dey’s third novel, DAUGHTER, out now (FSG and Doubleday), is an Instant National Bestseller, named a New York Times Fall Fiction pick, an Elle Magazine Book of the Year, a Lit Hub Unmissable Fall Book, and A Globe and Mail Autumn Best read. Claudia and the novel have been featured in Interview Magazine, BOMB, Document Journal, Hazlitt, The Walrus, and more. The New York Times calls DAUGHTER, “A darkly glittering tale…beautiful and piercing.”

Heartbreaker, Dey’s second novel, was shortlisted for the Trillium Book and Northern Lit Awards, named a best book of the year by multiple publications, and is being adapted for television. Her debut, Stunt, was a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award. Her plays have been produced internationally, and nominated for the Governor General’s, Dora and Trillium Book Awards. Dey has worked as a horror film actress, a guest artist at the National Theatre School, and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto. Her fiction, interviews, and essays have appeared in The Paris Review (“Mothers As Makers of Death”), McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, Hazlitt, The Believer, and elsewhere.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

give me all the lit fic about family dynamics!

at any given time, i have an unbearably narrow niche subgenre that i am addicted to. currently, that fixation is recently published lit fic about young-ish motherhood. i cannot get enough of reading women of my generation-adjacent navigating pregnancy and parenting and i have no idea why.

this scratched that itch, in a way, following a woman struggling to free herself from her father's sway and build a life and family of her own. it also touches on the other women he holds power over—wives, daughters, lovers—and other manipulators.

it manages to feel relatively new and refreshing even as it feels like there couldn't possibly be more content about this exact topic, and even as its writing style is very, very, very simple. 

bottom line: i enjoyed it!

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gut-wrenching portrayal of a dysfunctional family.

Check out my BookTube review on Hello, Bookworm . 📚🐛



"I was the light source upon which Paul drew, the inverse was just as true, and like that, we fed each other."

Daughter centers on a young woman named Mona whose father is an alluring yet destructive figure in her life. He treats her as his confidant, which stirs resentment and mistrust in the family and puts Mona at odds with her sisters and stepmother.

After Mona suffers a massive, unexpected loss, she begins to interrogate what kind of family she wants and what she’s willing to do to get it.

The story is written largely like a flowing inner monologue, yet the writing is sharp and succinct. Some lines bite so hard I'd swear they have teeth.

Would recommend to fans of contemporary family dramas or stories that convey the gravitational pull of a codependent relationship.

--

ORIGINAL POST 👇

Very curious about this book. Sounds akin to Enright's The Wren, the Wren only it's about a woman and her novelist father whose unfortunate life choices see her mired in drama and heartache.

[Fran Hawthorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel juggles the impossible: It explores intense emotions with scary honesty yet also with flat, almost Dick-and-Jane language. It does so, moreover, while shifting back and forth in time across more than 20 years. Thanks to author Claudia Dey’s extraordinary control, this juggling act mostly works.

For instance, as the book begins, Mona Dean’s erratic life is in more turmoil than usual because her father, Paul, a formerly best-selling novelist, has decided to confess to his wife, Cherry, that he’s been having an affair with his publicist. That might not be so bad, but Cherry is a classically wicked stepmother to Mona, and Paul tells her that Mona has been his confidante about his affair for weeks. Cherry then informs her and Paul’s daughter, Eva, who abruptly severs her previously close ties with Mona.

This prompts Mona to recall the visit a few years back when Eva had traveled six hours round-trip to watch Mona perform the role of Ophelia in “Hamlet” in a theater school production. When it’s time for Eva to leave:

“Eva had packed her small suitcase. It stood zipped by the door. We talked. We watched the clock. Eva’s car would arrive any minute. The weekend had gone by too fast. There was never enough time. I heard myself speak those endearments.”

Is the staccato language intended to dig directly into the mind of the modern-day Mona as she tries to evade the pain of losing Eva? Or is it simply annoying? The answer will depend on the reader.

The heart of the novel is the relationship between Mona and Paul, an almost unbearable mix of seduction, need, anger, and guilt.

Two decades earlier, when Mona and her elder sister Juliet were young adolescents, Paul had left them and their mother to marry Cherry, a Styrofoam heiress. In the ensuing years, he made only feeble efforts to keep his two daughters in his life, while failing to publish another novel. The girls’ mother attempted suicide. Cherry, for her part, sprayed Mona and Juliet with a garden hose at one point and demanded that they list every bite of food they ate while visiting on vacation. Still, when Paul calls, Mona drops everything and goes to him.

Through the course of the book and a series of life-altering crises, Mona bravely probes deeper and deeper into her feelings about her father.

With so much drama already in the emotions and relationships, Daughter is marred by extra touches of melodrama. Cherry and Eva are cartoon villains who stand out awkwardly among the more complex characters. Did the author (a Canadian playwright, novelist, and actress) really need to include a rape, a near-fatal miscarriage, an abortion, a bloody fight scene, and two suicide attempts?

But overall, this is an original and powerful novel that a reader won’t easily forget. (Adapted from my review in the New York Journal of Books https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book...)

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

for the damaged girls with complicated family relationships, who are inextricably linked & loyal to a parent for better or for worse - this one is for you.

Daughter is certainly a messy, unhinged, and searing examination of obsession and family entanglements and the strength it takes to break free from familial chains. Claudia excels at enrapturing readers as we watch Paul, the father and a well-known writer, spin the women in his life through a hypnotic web of lies. Through our main character Mona's point of view, we experience betrayal, love, trauma, and longing, often as a consequence of her father's actions (or lack thereof).

I think Claudia's writing style and switching between Mona's first point of view to other character's third point of view worked well for this story. Sometimes the switch would give me whiplash and I had no idea what the next sentence would be, but I actually really liked that & keeps your interested.

All in all, if you like a blazing, complicated, female story - highly recommend you read this!

Thank you Double Day Canada for this arc. All opinions are my own.

[cheska · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

it’s about the violence of being the “good” daughter, the one who stays quiet, makes herself small, who folds and folds until there’s nothing left. a story about women who’s lives were shaped by men — their presence, their absence, their whims — and reclaiming shape of it.

i liked it enough, however, it had the tendency to drag on. some parts made me emotional while other parts made me bored. kinda meh but not that bad.

the only time i get to be close to my father is when he is betraying his life.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every line in Daughter feels like a sharp slice. Dey has a way of organizing words that makes you feel like grief is haunting you. Like it’s water seeping in through the floorboards. But it is also so beautiful. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve read this year. Such is life and such is drama.

It’s one of my new favourites and every girl with a complicated relationship to her family- especially their father- needs to read this.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written novel--some of the phrases, some of the sentences took my breath away. I couldn't stop reading even though at points I wanted to: it's a sad book about the need for a parent who is not available, about how family dysfunction poisons the soul but also about the possibilit of surviving all that and building a life.

Mona is a writer. Her father is a writer; he wrote a book called Daughter. In some ways, the book we're reading is Mona's response to her father. Mona writes plays--she has written a one-woman play called "Margot" about Margot Hemingway (another daughter, a tragic one, of a famous writer father). Her family is impossibly, plausibly, and even somewhat commonly complicated and difficult.

This is a book about family relationships but also about creativity and the creative process. The more abstract (yet concretized) elements of the book save it from the intensity of the painful emotions and needs of the content.

I did not personally connect with Mona or her relationship with her father. I would imagine this book would be even more powerful for someone who did. But I was pulled into the work, first of all, as I said, by the amazing beauty and power of the writing and then by the writing about writing, as well as the relationships, the power structure (which sounds very political and abstract but is completely individualized and personal) of the relationships between men and women.

I'm glad I did not put it aside. It's one of those books that made me feel a little richer as a person, as a writer, as a woman after reading it.

[Emmeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ani described herself as a very secure painter. Like a lighting effect, she had watched her father’s sould shimmer in the room where he died, but no one had taught her more about painting than Marie Kondo. The whole joy thing, Ani summarized, knowing what to leave out.

This book really won me over, despite having a bunch of tropes that often annoy me (being about writers/actors/artists; fame; wealthy people). The writing was just so immersive, a bit of a torrent, monologue style, reminiscent of Rachel Cusk’s trilogy but more grounded in fictional people. I felt I had been taken on a satisfying voice-driven ride, and provided with a (albeit cold, spiky) family saga, in 250 pages.

Mona is the daughter of a writer who became a household name with his novel Daughter, published when she was a child and he was leaving her mother. Since then, his career has stalled, if not his Don Juan lifestyle. He’s still married to Cherry, her evil stepmother, but is prone to affairs with younger women. When these are discovered, the family fractures, with Mona and her older sister cast out on one side, while Cherry and their younger sister want nothing to do with them. But the father is a needy man; he’s always playing one family member off against the others, always running to one side and then the other. Other people get left out in the cold, but never him.

The father is given lots of second chances. After all, he’s an artist. But if he’s threatened by anything, perhaps it is Mona’s burgeoning career as a playwright and actress.

That’s it in way. Toxic family dynamics, though always, importantly, with a real sense of love, though sometimes that love comes to nothing. This is my second book this year about the damage wrought by a famous male artist on the women of the family (the other was Anne Enright’s The Wren, The Wren), and they have both been excellent.

For Sigrid, Paul’s voice was an insemination, his voice filled her body, it entered her bloodstream and her cells. She wanted him, and she told him so. Paul muttered seductive things back to Sigrid, but it was tiresome, he felt teleprompted, he had said these same things before.

[thebookybird · Rating 5 out of 5]

“𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵. 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘬𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘥.”

“𝘐 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘯𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘴.”

Wow. I’m about to get a little raw and vulnerable.

This books was a window into the darkest part of my past and it felt incredibly heartbreaking yet therapeutic to read.

My father had many infidelities, but the most notable was with a woman named Lee, that blew up my whole childhood, he even wrote a book about it. So to begin Daughter and in the first 30 pages for Mona’s father (a writer) to have an affair with a woman named Lee and the complicated dynamic and manipulations that follow really cut me deep, this story was instantly in my psyche.

The story continues to expand and still the parallels floored me, a half sibling and a full sibling, a stepmother, a scorn and hurt mother, a need for connection, family divides, high stakes emotions, a supportive and observant spouse, check check check…

The disillusion of the family is so tangible to me I felt completely transported to the very room Mona was occupying in this story, the conversations, the letters, the visceral reactions and non reactions, the evading and lack of validation or taking responsibilities, I felt completely seen,
immersed and healed by Deys writing.

No writer has ever quite put into words the feelings and allure of being someone’s confidant. The need for paternal love and the effects this has on our lives well through adulthood. The coming out of the rubble and healing. This story was alive to me and I felt the words like a salve.

All personal connections aside this story had the kind of hopefulness you seek, with small treasures of life lived sprinkled throughout and redemption served with precise subtly. Adored. Loved. Unforgettable.

[Abeer · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

To me, it read like it was written by a petulant child. It was so aloof and sheltered. It somehow managed to be commonplace and pretentious. They’re so wrapped up in their privilege to even recognize it. Mona is supposed to be this rich character but really all her depth is simply just perceived depth. Paul is supposed to be this problematic character but he’s just stupid (and all the women around him enable his stupidity). Also, what is up with all the back and forth emails, I don’t know any family that does that.

I know this will be popular and feel artsy in certain circles. Happy to excluded.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

complicated father/daughter novels destroy me bc of the relationship i had with my own. i miss him all the time.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) Like her protagonist, Mona Dean, Dey is a playwright, but the Canadian author has clearly stated that her third novel is not autofiction, even though it may feel like it. (Fragmentary sections, fluidity between past and present, a lack of speech marks; not to mention that Dey quotes Rachel Cusk and there’s a character named Sigrid.) Mona’s father, Paul, is a serial adulterer who became famous for his novel Daughter and hasn’t matched that success in the 20 years since. He left Mona and Juliet’s mother, Natasha, for Cherry, with whom he had another daughter, Eva. There have been two more affairs. Every time Mona meets Paul for a meal or a coffee, she’s returned to a childhood sense of helplessness and conflict.

I had a sordid contract with my father. I was obsessed with my childhood. I had never gotten over my childhood. Cherry had been cruel to me as a child, and I wanted to get back at Cherry, and so I guarded my father’s secrets like a stash of weapons, waiting for the moment I could strike.

It took time for me to warm to Dey’s style, which is full of flat, declarative sentences, often overloaded with character names. The phrasing can be simple and repetitive, with overuse of comma splices. At times Mona’s unemotional affect seems to be at odds with the melodrama of what she’s recounting: an abortion, a rape, a stillbirth, etc. I twigged to what Dey was going for here when I realized the two major influences were Hemingway and Shakespeare.

Mona’s breakthrough play is Margot, based on the life of one Hemingway granddaughter, and she’s working on a sequel about another. There are four women in Paul’s life, and Mona once says of him during a period of writer’s block, “He could not write one true sentence.” So Paul (along with Mona, along with Dey) may be emulating Hemingway.

And then there’s the King Lear setup. (I caught on to this late, perhaps because I was also reading a more overt Lear update at the time, Private Rites by Julia Armfield.) The larger-than-life father; the two older daughters and younger half-sister; the resentment and estrangement. Dey makes the parallel explicit when Mona, musing on her Hemingway-inspired oeuvre, asks, “Why had Shakespeare not called the play King Lear’s Daughters?”

Were it not for this intertextuality, it would be a much less interesting book. And, to be honest, the style was not my favourite. There were some lines that really irked me (“The flowers they were considering were flamboyant to her eye, she wanted less flamboyant flowers”; “Antoine barked. He was barking.”; “Outside, it sunned. Outside, it hailed.”). However, rather like Sally Rooney, Dey has prioritized straightforward readability. I found that I read this quickly, almost as if in a trance, inexorably drawn into this family’s drama.

Related reads: Monsters by Claire Dederer, The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright, The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Wood

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

a bit overhyped I would say by the book community but it was pretty good. I liked how Paul’s narcissism was both indulged and criticized and how the various women remain bound up in various “daddy” issues that reverberate to the rest of their familial/female relationships. Only thing that really didn’t vibe with me was the writing. It felt simple but stilted while believing it’s being revolutionary when it’s simply ordinary (maybe that’s a narrative reflection of Mona or not but that may be my inference and not a fact that was done decisively by Dey)

also - who is making a theme park about a experimental art novel about a father and daughter; this isn’t Harry Potter ?????

[Zain · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose is crude and elegant; raw emotion bottled up and corked.

[Clara Mundy]

Does a great job showing the complexities of living in a dysfunctional family where everyone is hurt and hurting and the people causing the most pain rarely deign to own up to their mistakes. For as much as I love digging into the messiness of mother/daughter relationships, it was great to read about the other side of the coin: what it means to be a daughter who loves her father, what it means when that father only sees the daughter as a vessel into which he can pour his own ideas and melodramas. The thing that really held me back from loving this book is the unaddressed level of privilege all the characters enjoy—so many of them work solely as artists or actors or writers and seem to be able to go months without producing anything, yet there’s never any kind of financial anxiety. And within the characters’ professions, success seemed wayyy too easily attainable; like a guy who gave one good performance of Hamlet in college can go years without auditioning and within a few months he’s up for a role (opposite RIHANNA) that could get him a best supporting actor nom? Bffr.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay- I'll be the odd one out. This is an exhausting stream of consciousness broken up by bits and bobs that's all about Mona and her father Paul. Paul wrote one book, spent years ignoring and using various women, including his daughter, and generally being a not very nice person. Mona's got issues, lots of issues. This is the latest entry in the new genre of Unhappy privileged young women and while it may appeal to some, I found the writing just....t0o. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A pass from me (I DNF) but I suspect that others will enjoy it.

[idiomatic · Rating 4 out of 5]

love a book that can pull tension from nothing. not thematically inventive, certainly not overturning any new rocks content-wise, but compelling. the art world stuff works a bit less well (my beautiful, intense reverie broke a little when rihanna showed up lmfao) than the world of wealth stuff, where the austerity of the prose nicely sets off the ott-ness of the trappings, and though every character has a set and familiar role to play in the story, they each come with a distinct perspective.

[Irene · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know the kind of characters that you just want to reach into the novel and slap? This book only has those characters.

[Martie Nees Record · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genre: Literary fiction/Psychology
Publisher: Macmillan
Pub date: Jan. 1, 2023
“To be loved by your father is to be loved by God.” So opens “Margot,” the debut play by Mona, the protagonist of Claudia Dey’s “Daughter.” That first line pretty much sums up the gist of the story. Mona’s father, Paul—a man famous for one great novel—is a magnetic yet a damaging force to be around. The family is dysfunctional in both the usual ways and in some oedipal ways as well. Claudia Dey created a dark, well-written novel that turns out to be surprisingly dull. Paul regards Mona as his confidant, sharing intimate details of his marriage. Then, Mona is punished for her father’s sins. She gets kicked out of the family after Paul reveals his affair to his wife and informs her of his daughter’s nasty remarks about her. When Paul cuts Mona out of his life, she tumbles into depression. And she glows like a woman in love when he lets her back in. Both are needy with massive insecurities that feed off one another, making for a blood-sucking relationship between a father and daughter.

This is an intensely psychological novel written diary-like. Dey is a talented writer. She does a great job showing the complexities in this family, where everyone is hurt and/or hurting someone. However, for all its strengths, the prose in ‘Daughter’ is often repetitive, making it difficult for the reader to remain engaged. How many times can one read about Mona’s bipolar-like heartache when her stepmom keeps Paul away from her? Even Mona’s play is about her obsession with her dad. The play centers on real-life Margot Hemingway, who happens to have a father who is a famous writer. Reading “Daughter” can feel like being hit over the head with the same tedious dialogue. This novel was not for me. If you want a tale about daddy issues, you might enjoy this one more than I did. However, like the repetitive behaviors of a dysfunctional family, “Daughter” can be all too predictable.

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[Emma Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really so excellent!! It’s been awhile since I’ve read something so exciting. I love Dey’s exploration of an “endless hall of mirrors” - our families, writing, art, perceptions of ourselves are reflective surfaces to find ourselves in and what is fiction but a mirror. What is fiction at all but a way to reflect experience back to ourselves. The piece about the bridge in act one and act three made me smile. Great book!! Highly recommend.

[Nicole Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

heartbreaking, frustrating, and in the end, powerful. i don’t think i’ve read a book like this one. the narrator changed at random which was at times confusing, but it worked with the structure of the book. mona felt real to me. there were times where i gasped out loud because of the way the writing so subtly brought you into a heavy moment. a steady, unique read.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

5, this one is wicked and cruel 🔥☠️

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝙄 𝙙𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙚, 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙩. 𝘽𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙋𝙖𝙪𝙡 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙄 𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚, 𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙢𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙡 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙.

I am late in reviewing this novel, due to health issues (mostly an arm injury and vertigo that comes and goes) but I am so happy finally be writing this, because this story sucked me in. The manipulations of love are many in this searing novel about a parasitic relationship between a father and daughter. Mona Dean’s father Paul is a writer, but only famous for one of his novels that became a bestseller. His success as a dad and husband is less than stellar. Long ago he abandoned Mona, her older sister Juliet, and their mother Natasha for Cherry. He started a new family, one with wealth and comfort. He is a black hole of need, reckless with other people, incapable of loving one woman alone, racked with fears he may never write again and pulling his powerless daughter into his orbit, his confidante, his audience and his co-conspirator. He thrives on excitement, not stale and steady love. Her loyalty to him eclipses her relationship with her partner Wes and destroys the bond she has with her younger half-sister Eva who sees her part in their father’s infidelity as a poisonous betrayal. The truth is, his affair and her shameful role in it inspires her artistic creativity, just as love affairs fire his blood and work , but the fallout brings Mona crashing down, threatening the premiere of her own show. She is an actress and playwright whose famous father’s name helps sell tickets, but it’s his love she hungers after.

It isn’t the first time Paul has set her up, cut her out. Paul’s gift of charming people has been a tool for his writing, serving him well in fulfilling his desires, particularly where women are concerned. He uses people up, gets what he needs and moves on. She is shocked when the truth is out and he lets her take the fall, worse, he denies her his fatherly affection and attention. Their intimacies are of no use to Paul now that he has come clean to his wife, Cherry. Once again, her father’s light is no longer upon her, and it is eating her alive. While sneaking around with his latest conquest and needing Mona’s focus so badly to guide and support him, Paul’s presence and attentions were vital to her. They were like one person, tangled in need. That he could just throw her to the wolves to save himself, leaving her lost and alone is damaging. Cherry blames her more than Paul for his infidelity, even though it began before he started confiding in Mona, an easy escape to confronting her husband’s weak character.

The women are always to blame, it is never his fault. Before it was Mona, her sister and mother who held him back, kept him from his fame- weights to be shaken off. Then it’s Cherry’s coldness that pushes him into another’s arms. It’s like a circle, Mona and her sister Juliet are expected to prove their worthiness to gain entrance back into their father’s life and their half-sister Eva’s good graces. Juliet and Mona’s reactions are wildly different, and Mona is still eating any crumbs of love her father drops, so desperate to be made useful. But in his world, Paul plays at being King or God to his women, weighing and measuring loyalty, how and when they are worth his time, while giving nothing of himself.

There are head games galore, dysfunctional family dynamics and we are with Mona as she wakes up and becomes more than Paul’s sullen daughter. He has revised their history, controlled the narrative leaving her questioning her worth, her very identity. He is an expert at controlling emotions, playing at being the victim and avoiding the damaged women he leaves in his wake. Who is she when she isn’t Paul’s character, because really that’s all every woman in his life is. There is a formula to his relationships, he needs drama, he turns the families against each other to feel important. It is maddening the abuse he dishes out with his mind games, what a wreck of a man. Mona will know a Paul beyond the image he promotes, maybe he isn’t the gifted, tormented writer he plays at being. This is an intelligent work, and I loved how it ended, a part of my favorite line is about ‘a daughter auditioning for her father’s love’, that burns in my mind. It is heartbreaking and yet believable because such relationships play out every day. This is an author who understands the power people abuse in love of all kinds. Wow!

Yes read it!

Published: September 12, 2023

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

[Klaudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Książka-pełnia: wszystko łączy się w całość i pożera własny ogon, rodząc się i umierając bez wyraźnego początku i końca. Wrócę tu jeszcze z większą opinią.

Wróciłam:

Powieść o tym, jak wszystko można ustrukturyzować w narrację i o tym, że jednocześnie jest to nasze największe przekleństwo i błogosławieństwo. Ostatecznie, jesteśmy tylko opowieściami, które snujemy sami o sobie oraz opowieściami, które snują o nas inni. Rzeczywistość jest tylko opowieścią o rzeczywistości, w której język stanowi widoczny znak traumy niemożliwości skomunikowania się z drugim człowiekiem - komunikacja, której doświadczamy jest tylko zbiorową fikcją o komunikacji, zrozumieniu, poznaniu. Ja to ktoś inny - i w tej powieści nie do końca wiadomo, kto jest kim i kto właściwie opowiada kogo i co.

Świetna powieść. Dla fanów Siri Hustvedt i jej „Świata w płomieniach”.

[cass krug · Rating 4 out of 5]

daughter is a sparse yet deep dive into toxic family relationships and their power dynamics. mona is a playwright and actress who has a hot and cold relationship with her father, paul - they are only close when he is in turmoil with mona’s stepmother and half sister. mona is used as a scapegoat when family bonds are severed forever due to paul’s confiding in mona about the various affairs he has.
we also see mona’s relationships with her husband, mother, sister, and best friend, as well as her struggles with rape, depression, and pregnancy.

claudia dey does an incredible job of submerging you in the gaslighting, lies, and confusion that cloud mona’s relationships. she pits you, as the reader, against certain characters, much like paul does with the two halves of his own family. i was (of course) a huge fan of her sparse prose style that still allowed you to feel the full impact of what mona went through. she expertly maneuvered back and forth through time to flesh out the history of each relationship. i also thought the way she juxtaposed mona and paul’s writing careers added another interesting aspect to their dynamic and enjoyed the parallels between the novel’s events and the characters’ work.

i don’t think enough people are talking about this one! would recommend to fans of tides by sara freeman! 4.5 stars

reading wrap up!

[Krissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review

Mona is an actress, playwright and daughter to a famous man. Her relationship with her father is very complicated, as he is a complicated and deeply flawed man. His actions has ruined and complicated the life of Mona, her sister Juliet, their half sister Eva, their mothers, and the women he has been unfaithful with over the years. He pulls Mona into his dramas, and further complicates her relationship with a stepmother who resented her from the beginning, and tarnishes a relationship with a half sister she has always treated as a full sister. It is only when the deep loss finds her, does she begin to understand and separate healthy unconditional love, and the absent conditional love her father has always practiced.

This was so beautifully written and told. Every character was so dynamic, and human that the reading experience felt so real. I hated characters but ultimately understood and empathized with them. Mona was such a strong character to base the story's point of view. I loved the story telling and the exploration of complex family relationships, loss, and identity.

[Meg Doll · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was unlike anything i’ve ever read before and would definitely recommend if you like lit fic exploring complicated family relationships, particularly between fathers and daughters.

this deals with some heavy subject matter (mental health, miscarriage, etc.), so definitely read the triggers warnings prior to.

there was a lot of hopping around from past to present and from our main character, mona, to other characters, but i think claudia dey did such a great job with this. i had no issues following along, but if you don’t usually like that style of writing — that’s just a heads up and something to be aware of as i saw a few other reviewers mentioning the same thing (some enjoyed it, others didn’t)

yay for a new to me canadian author! i will definitely read whatever she releases next!!

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Rachel Mery · Rating 5 out of 5]

rough read for those of us with daddy issues

[Katie Goodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was a pretty depressing slog, wouldn’t run out to read this one. This woman’s family was so frustrating and she could not catch a break. But I really enjoyed the ending including a truly shocking celeb cameo and some good comeuppance.