Skip to product information
1 of 0

The Vet's Daughter

A Virago Modern Classic
  • Author
    • Barbara Comyns
Format
Regular price £9.99
Regular price Sale price £9.99
INTRODUCED BY JANE GARDAM

'A small Gothic masterpiece . . . I have read it many times, and with every re-read I marvel again at its many qualities' SARAH WATERS

'It projects its fantastic story with a tangible realness . . . A wonderful and original novel' ALAN HOLLINGHURST


'She shows mastery of the structures of a fast-moving narrative and a consistent backdrop to the ecstasies and agonies of the human condition' JANE GARDAM, SPECTATOR

Growing up in Edwardian South London, Alice Rowlands longs for romance and excitement, for a release from a life that is dreary, restrictive and lonely. Her father, a vet, is harsh and domineering; his new girlfriend brash and lascivious. Alice seeks refuge in memories and fantasies, in her rapturous longing for Nicholas, a handsome young sailor and in the blossoming of what she perceives as her occult powers.

A series of strange events unfolds that leads her, dressed in bridal white to a scene of ecstatic triumph and disaster among the crowds on Clapham Common. The Vet's Daughter is a uniquely vivid, witty and touching story of love and mystery.

Not available for shipping to the following countries:

  • ASM
  • GUM
  • MNP
  • UMI
  • FSM
  • MHL
  • PHL
  • PRI
  • USA
  • VIR
  • Published: Jul 04 2013
  • Pages: 176
  • 196 x 128mm
  • ISBN: 9781844088386
View full details

Press Reviews

  • Sarah Waters

    A small Gothic masterpiece
  • Alan Hollinghurst

    Told in the first person by a young girl, [The Vet's Daughter] has the vividness and innocence [and] the revelatory intensity of the narrations of Pip or young David Copperfield. It projects its fantastic story with a tangible realness and manages to make public and inevitable a realm of private sensation close to nightmare . . . A wonderful and original novel
  • Graham Greene

    The strange offbeat talent of Miss Comyns and that innocent eye which observes with childlike simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrence, these have never, I think, been more impressively exercised than in The Vet's Daughter
  • Jane Gardam

    Spectator
    The Vet's Daughter is Barbara Comyns's fourth and most startling novel . . . she shows mastery of the structures of a fast-moving narrative and a consistent backdrop to the ecstasies and agonies of the human condition
  • Sarah Waters

    A small Gothic masterpiece.
  • Alan Hollinghurst

    A wonderful and original novel.