I must confess that I almost abandoned this book. But I’m glad I didn’t.

Daughter is a heavy book. It was written by Toronto-based author Claudia Dey and tells the story of a playwriter, Mona, who lives in the shadow of her father, Paul, a famous writer. He took a second wife after divorcing the main character’s mother, and both families seem to gravitate around this man, including, and especially, Mona.

One of the interesting turn of events involves the name of the book itself. “Daughter” is also the name of the book that made Paul famous, and its contents are another ingredient for his manipulative games. This piece of the puzzle comes back to haunt us at the very end.

But regardless of the ending, it was a difficult read from the beginning. The relationship dynamics between the two families are filled with tension, manipulation and deception. Mona’s character seems like a ball being tossed by the waves of her father’s volatile moods. She seemed so weak to me.

“I wondered what Eva would do if she passed me on the sidewalk of that commercial street. (…) Would Eva glare at me? Would she spit? When I encountered Eva in my mind she forgot all about the estrangement, she forgot to ignore me”

Daughter, p. 157

But then things evolve and Mona starts to become more her own person. And although she never becomes the hero that people expect, she morphs into someone… stronger.

“I wrote as an act of conversion, of taking the severed parts of my life and assembling them, and in assembling them into a new form, separate from me, they lost their power over me”

Daughter, p. 175

Another thing that was hard for me to follow was the constant change in perspective from one paragraph to the other. You’re reading Mona’s first-person account and then the next thing you see is a third-person narrative. It took me a while to get used to it, but in the end, I think it adds to the chaos and above all, to the blurred boundaries that surround everyone in the family.

“When people know you well, you perform within the confines of their view of you. With strangers you encounter new parts of yourself”

Daughter, p. 248

Overall I think this is a good read, as long as you’re in the mood for something emotionally dark.