This Is My Daughter

"This Is My Daughter" could be called a novel in a kind of American classic style that's not much in favor these days: it's well written, long on descriptions -- of both settings and characters' emotional states, and concerns WASPy types with lots of blueblood prestige and eighties-era money who live in the Northeast. The book carefully tracks the the subtle emotional stresses that what used to called a "blended family" undergoes during the processes of divorce and remarriage, centering on the two daughters involved, Amanda and Tess. There's nothing groundbreaking here, perhaps, but Robinson proves herself to be an acute observer of human emotion and, in particular, of emotional discomfort: while the book's surfaces are lush and show more comfortable, few people in it are ever really happy or at ease. It also describes an interesting time in which divorce was legal but, in some high-flown social circles, not quite accepted: many of the characters here are stumbling around in unknown, potentially dangerous territory that their distinguished ancestors would never have had to negotiate.

To be honest, I found reading this one a bit taxing at times, and perhaps wishing that the book wasn't quite as focused on the characters' interiors, and, finally, that it wasn't quite so long. But this approach does help the author render each of her characters with remarkable precision, which can itself be involving. As the reviewer below me noted, the book is absorbing in its own way, and it flows well for a book that's such a serious character study: Robinson moves easily and naturally from one character's meditation to another's. She's also careful to make any of these characters into a one-dimensional villain or hero: in family life, she seems to be saying, everyone hurts someone, and everyone gets hurt. In this, misunderstandings are shown to be both terribly damaging, though perhaps inevitable. "This Is My Daughter" is not exactly my style, but even so, it's recommended to those who value literary craft, those who have lots of patience with the slow dynamics of family disintegration and reintegration, and those to whom the very term "beach read" is odious. show less

I loved this book---I was just terribly worried when I had about 40 pages left as to how things would work out! Of course, now that I've finished it I am absolutely wishing there was more!!! The end didn't exactly leave me hanging, just in a place where I know there could be much more to the story to see what happens to these characters about whom I could practically draw in time and space. There was so much detail in their physical description and their emotional ups and downs. Just a great reading experience, very absorbing.