The Daughter
Jane Shemilt
Morrow, Mar 3 2015, $14.99
ISBN: 9780062320476
In 2009 Bristol, England, doctors Ted the neurosurgeon and Jenny
the family medical practitioner raise their three teenage offspring (seventeen years
old twins Ed and Theo, and fifteen years old Naomi) in an affluent happy
household. To friends, neighbors and
even Ted and Jenny, the five Malcolm’s have the perfect family.
In her school’s production of West Side Story, Naomi stars as
Maria. Near the end of a successful run,
one night after the curtain came down Naomi fails to come home. The police searched for the missing teen
without any success as she seemed to just vanish in thin air. As the months pass with no news, the
interrelationships between the Malcom family members implode. Looking back at the traumatic pivotal moment after
a year passed makes Jenny feel guilty for ignoring the signs of help her
daughter sent to her and her husband.
This leads her to analyze what she knows about her other children and
spouse from her Dorset cottage where she no longer resides with Ted, Ed and
Theo.
The Daughter is a cautionary family drama that warns parents don’t
become complacent wearing comfortable blinders when it comes to truly seeing
family members especially your children.
Jenny is a memorable protagonist as she examines the signs she missed
hidden behind a veneer of materialistic normalcy. Enigmatic Naomi purposely remains somewhat in
the shadows adding further fall-out tension to her mother’s already nuked
existence. The remaining three exist
only in relation to the matriarch or the missing daughter.
Harriet Klausner
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