Familiar territory which has been explored many times over in other novels and feels oddly flat.
Her Mother’s Daughter is the story of a woman, Josephine, damaged by her own childhood in Ireland and follows her journey to London and recounts her struggle with a family secret that has marked her life and prevented her ever returning home. Seventeen years after fleeing Ireland with the intention never to return and now with two children and a husband of her own, Josephine has never come to terms or left the trauma of her old memories behind. Despite never having returned to see her family and with negligible contact through the years she is still irrevocably bound to her dark past and has nursed a silent and simmering rage that she has failed to disclose to a sympathetic and adoring husband, Michael Reilly. However, all it takes is one phone call from Josephine’s younger sister, Siobhan, and the news of their mother’s impending death to force her to make the return journey home.
The prospect of her forthcoming return sets Josephine on a path of remembering the final unhappy years in Ireland and she struggles to control her inner turmoil from her own family and maintain the facade of contentment. For a ten-year-old Clare the countdown to her inaugural visit to her mother’s family in Ireland brings excitement and the hope that it could bring an end to her mother’s turbulent emotions, black moods and reliance on “apple juice” from the spirits cabinet. As Clare tries to understand her mother and maintenance a semblance of a happy childhood for the sake of her younger brother, Thomas, her attempts are not well received and she bears the brunt of Josephine’s vicious tongue, explaining the children’s preference for their father, whose love is blissfully uncomplicated. The unfolding story chronicles family life and Josephine’s capricious mood swings are seen through the eyes of ten-year-old daughter, Clare, and her hopes for the holiday are mirrored by her father Michael who insists the return home is just what the doctor ordered for Josephine.
Narrated by mother and daughter, Clare’s part remains in 1997 and portrays her own delight at making the journey to Ireland and eventually meeting a benevolent grandfather. Josephine’s narrative opens in 1997 and then moves back to 1980 and progresses through the course of the years in order to illustrate key moments in her child and womanhood. The effects of these events bring greater clarity to her attempts to stifle the ever present feeling of not being worthy of love and explain her descent into mental illness and increasing reliance on alcohol. Yet the return home brings revelations of its own and Josephine is forced to come to terms with the fact that her assumptions on leaving Ireland were wide of the mark and that the person she has held responsible for the fragmentation of her family was not in fact the guilty party. As this stark realisation unleashes the full force of nearly two decades of bitterness and anger it wreaks havoc with her attempts at making a family life all of her own.
Personally I feel that comparisons to Jodi Picoult are significantly wide of mark for the very obvious reason that over half of the narrative comes from the voice of a ten-year-old Clare and there is a limit to how nuanced her insights can be without feeling overly contrived. Much of Clare’s story is a day to day tale of a very ordinary life and rightly simplistic and of minimal depth. For every one observation that proves revelatory there is an endless stream of hopscotch, sweet treats and anecdotes in the park and I frequently felt like I was waiting in hope for the odd moment of innocent insight. Although I recognise that this novel was one of a mother leaving the scars of her troubled life on her own daughter I do feel that another adult narrator, in the form of either friend or husband, would have brought a little more authority to proceedings.
My dismay is that is takes well over a third of the novel before the Reilly family even make the trip to Ireland, longer still until they reach Josephine’s childhood home and given that the seminal dark secret is eminently guessable and not without precedent (certainly given the era), I found myself irritated by Josephine’s wallowing self-pity. Arguably she made a rod for her own back by failing to have ever disclosed the secret truth to a husband who appears besotted with her and simply opting to paper over the cracks by starting a family of her own. Admittedly it does not help that the direction that the story is headed in is readily apparent and given is one that I been done explored many times over in contemporary fiction. Alice Fitzgerald wrings every bit out this single, admittedly horrific, event in Josephine’s life but during an interminable dissection I lost sympathy with her character. Rarely have I felt so untouched by a novel which is intended as revelatory, moving and emotive and with half of the narrative written from a child’s perspective I feel that critiquing the writing style is something of a non-starter. So whilst this is not an unworthwhile read and I never once thought of not seeing Josephine and Clare’s story to a conclusion, it sadly left me cold. I would struggle to recommend this novel as for me it felt low on insight and given its obvious predictability adds little to the swathe of literature which has already nigh on exhausted the topic.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.
The prospect of her forthcoming return sets Josephine on a path of remembering the final unhappy years in Ireland and she struggles to control her inner turmoil from her own family and maintain the facade of contentment. For a ten-year-old Clare the countdown to her inaugural visit to her mother’s family in Ireland brings excitement and the hope that it could bring an end to her mother’s turbulent emotions, black moods and reliance on “apple juice” from the spirits cabinet. As Clare tries to understand her mother and maintenance a semblance of a happy childhood for the sake of her younger brother, Thomas, her attempts are not well received and she bears the brunt of Josephine’s vicious tongue, explaining the children’s preference for their father, whose love is blissfully uncomplicated. The unfolding story chronicles family life and Josephine’s capricious mood swings are seen through the eyes of ten-year-old daughter, Clare, and her hopes for the holiday are mirrored by her father Michael who insists the return home is just what the doctor ordered for Josephine.
Narrated by mother and daughter, Clare’s part remains in 1997 and portrays her own delight at making the journey to Ireland and eventually meeting a benevolent grandfather. Josephine’s narrative opens in 1997 and then moves back to 1980 and progresses through the course of the years in order to illustrate key moments in her child and womanhood. The effects of these events bring greater clarity to her attempts to stifle the ever present feeling of not being worthy of love and explain her descent into mental illness and increasing reliance on alcohol. Yet the return home brings revelations of its own and Josephine is forced to come to terms with the fact that her assumptions on leaving Ireland were wide of the mark and that the person she has held responsible for the fragmentation of her family was not in fact the guilty party. As this stark realisation unleashes the full force of nearly two decades of bitterness and anger it wreaks havoc with her attempts at making a family life all of her own.
Personally I feel that comparisons to Jodi Picoult are significantly wide of mark for the very obvious reason that over half of the narrative comes from the voice of a ten-year-old Clare and there is a limit to how nuanced her insights can be without feeling overly contrived. Much of Clare’s story is a day to day tale of a very ordinary life and rightly simplistic and of minimal depth. For every one observation that proves revelatory there is an endless stream of hopscotch, sweet treats and anecdotes in the park and I frequently felt like I was waiting in hope for the odd moment of innocent insight. Although I recognise that this novel was one of a mother leaving the scars of her troubled life on her own daughter I do feel that another adult narrator, in the form of either friend or husband, would have brought a little more authority to proceedings.
My dismay is that is takes well over a third of the novel before the Reilly family even make the trip to Ireland, longer still until they reach Josephine’s childhood home and given that the seminal dark secret is eminently guessable and not without precedent (certainly given the era), I found myself irritated by Josephine’s wallowing self-pity. Arguably she made a rod for her own back by failing to have ever disclosed the secret truth to a husband who appears besotted with her and simply opting to paper over the cracks by starting a family of her own. Admittedly it does not help that the direction that the story is headed in is readily apparent and given is one that I been done explored many times over in contemporary fiction. Alice Fitzgerald wrings every bit out this single, admittedly horrific, event in Josephine’s life but during an interminable dissection I lost sympathy with her character. Rarely have I felt so untouched by a novel which is intended as revelatory, moving and emotive and with half of the narrative written from a child’s perspective I feel that critiquing the writing style is something of a non-starter. So whilst this is not an unworthwhile read and I never once thought of not seeing Josephine and Clare’s story to a conclusion, it sadly left me cold. I would struggle to recommend this novel as for me it felt low on insight and given its obvious predictability adds little to the swathe of literature which has already nigh on exhausted the topic.
With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.