Toxic Family Review: Daughter by Claudia Dey

My wee review:

Daughter by Claudia Dey is a dark, raw, and powerful book about dysfunctional (nay, toxic) family relationships that is impressive with its sparse style and emotional depth, and somehow somewhat uplifting. Content warnings: sexual assault, emotional abuse, and pregnancy loss.

The candle represents the faint flicker of goodness in the

characters and my hope that the book will have a happy (or at

least not completely miserable)

ending (Credit)

Reading Daughter by Claudia Dey felt like getting sucked into a black hole of betrayal and manipulation, then swept up by the propulsive and sparse writing, then consumed by raw emotion, and then coming out the other side in one piece, having enjoyed the journey.

Daughter tells the story of the daughter of a famous novelist, Mona, who is an accomplished playwright but whose identity and accomplishments seem to exist only in relation to her father, Paul. Paul is, to put it bluntly, a narcissistic and deeply insecure man who has constructed a relational web of women around him who seek (consciously or sub-consciously) his approval and will hurt each other (and themselves) to obtain it. In less than 300 pages, we fall into Mona's world, her emotions, and her journey to free herself from this tangled web.

What I loved:

I loved this book, despite it being dark and hard to read at parts.

First, the style. A couple weeks ago I went to a talk with Ms. Dey and her friend, Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist, at the Toronto Reference Library. Dey described how she wanted to strip the text down of all extraneous adjectives and filler, and that's definitely what she accomplished. The text is sparse, raw, and propulsive--and sometimes very 'stream of consciousness'. It may not be my normal cup o' tea, but for such a dark and emotional text, it worked.

My terrible photo of Leslie Feist, Claudia Dey, and the

back of a tall blonde woman's head at a very crowded

Toronto Public Library event (credit)

Next, the characters. Mona is deeply flawed but I was rootin' for her. She goes through some dark stuff in the middle part of the book, and her grief is overwhelming--to her, and to me as the reader, at times. At that point I became fully invested in seeing whether she could come back to life and re-define her identity separate from her dad. All around her, the level of dysfunction in her family members is extreme (yes, there is an evil stepmother and stepsister), but I also grew to have empathy for them as I learned more. And, there are a small number of truly good and loving characters around Mona that provide the necessary dose of kindness and humanity to make the despair tolerable. Spoiler alert- her partner, Wes, is basically a dream man.

And, I have to admit, while I come from a loving family, I'm sure we all could see some dynamics among this F-ed up group that remind us of our own families somewhat (helloooo family email threads that become passive aggressive, if not fully aggressive!)

What I loved less:

As I said, the style veers into the 'stream of consciousness, no paragraph breaks for pages' style, which isn't generally my fave. But, because it was used sparingly, it worked.

Also, sometimes it feels like Ms Dey relies on the old cliche of "beautiful and complicated woman whose thinness represents her sexual power and emotional complexity complexity." Mona, as a moody, complicated artist, is often described as being thin (sickly thin at times), and her thinness is emphasized to underscore her depth and emotion at points, as well as her power over other women and men. It felt a little 'heroin chic' at parts, and just not necessary.

Final thought:

This is a very unique, dark, but somehow uplifting book, that will make your family holiday drama seem like a Hallmark movie in comparison.