The Vet's Daughter
A Virago Modern Classic
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'A small Gothic masterpiece . . . I have read it many times, and with every re-read I marvel again at its many qualities' SARAH WATERS
'A wonderful and original novel' ALAN HOLLINGHURST
'The strange off-beat talent of Barbara Comyns [whose] innocent eye observes with child-like simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrence' GRAHAM GREENE
'Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
In the brown hall my mother was standing; and she looked at me with her sad eyes half-covered by their heavy lids . . . if she had been a dog, my father would have destroyed her.
In Edwardian South London, Alice lives in the shadow of her domineering father, a vet who treats his family with contempt, in a house full of screeching animals. After her mother's death, she is appalled by her father's brash, lascivious new girlfriend. But as Alice retreats ever deeper into a world of memories, fantasies and rapturous longings, she discovers an extraordinary secret power of her own - which, finally, will lead her to a crowd on Clapham Common in a scene of ecstatic triumph and disaster.
Blackly funny and indelibly haunting, The Vet's Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge.
INTRODUCED BY JANE GARDAM
'A wonderful and original novel' ALAN HOLLINGHURST
'The strange off-beat talent of Barbara Comyns [whose] innocent eye observes with child-like simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrence' GRAHAM GREENE
'Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
In the brown hall my mother was standing; and she looked at me with her sad eyes half-covered by their heavy lids . . . if she had been a dog, my father would have destroyed her.
In Edwardian South London, Alice lives in the shadow of her domineering father, a vet who treats his family with contempt, in a house full of screeching animals. After her mother's death, she is appalled by her father's brash, lascivious new girlfriend. But as Alice retreats ever deeper into a world of memories, fantasies and rapturous longings, she discovers an extraordinary secret power of her own - which, finally, will lead her to a crowd on Clapham Common in a scene of ecstatic triumph and disaster.
Blackly funny and indelibly haunting, The Vet's Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge.
INTRODUCED BY JANE GARDAM
- Published: Jan 22 2026
- ISBN: 9780349019666
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
SpectatorThe 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