Yes, My Darling Daughter

I'd read in some book review that this book was one of the editor's favorites. The cover does NOT do it justice but the writing, the pace, the plot are nothing short of spectacular; magnificent. I could not put the book down and read it in 2 days. I can't say enough good things about it -- I liked it better than any other book I've read this year and I read about 5 per week. Read it today!

I loved this book. The little girl, Sylvie, was spooky, but very vulnerable, and my heart was fully engaged. Her mother, Grace, too was a vulnerable, single-mother with many problems--after 3 years, she still love her child's father, even though he has never seen Sylvie, and has rejected both of them. He's married and much older than Grace (seduced her when she was 18). Grace is poor and lives in a bad part of town (London). And, above all, she has her hands full with. Sylvie is a beautiful, but strange child. Sylvie has "tantrums," which other mothers think only require that Grace apply a bit of discipline and boundary-setting. But, Grace knows there is much more to it than that, but can't seem to find help for her little girl, whose getting worse. When Sylvie's kicked out of the nursery (she's only 3 years old), and after consulting with a psychiatrist, and having no place else to turn, she seeks out a psychologist whose been written about in the newspaper--he investigates situations where children may be remembering past lives, lives that have ended tragically. So, the suspense begins. This was such a haunting, eerily suspenseful novel. Those seem to be hard to come by these days. I haven't read anything as good on this subject since the "Reincarnation of Peter Proud." I couldn't put it down.

Though the book that I read has a different title and cover, it is the same book. Though, I think that the title on my book is better. (Drowning Girl) The prologue gives away a lot of the story. Even though I figured out most of the ending by the middle of the book, it doesn't take away from it. It just made me read faster, because I wanted the characters to find out what I did. Grace and Sylvie are mother and daughter, living in London. Grace is a single mum, the father of Sylvie already married with a family. Grace has a lot of guilt over this, and thinks that her lack of family has been causing problems, especially since Sylvie has been having bad dreams, biting children at the nursery, and has an intense fear of water. She constantly draws the same house over and over and claims that she once lived there. Even though Grace's friends and therapists think that Grace is the problem, Grace thinks that there is something else going on. Why is Sylvie so wise, beyond her four years? Why does Sylvie insist on calling her mum, "Grace?" Why does she make the claim that she misses her family and her home? One day, as they are making collages, Grace cuts out a picture of a seaside town, and Sylvie insists that she lived there. Grace enlists the help of a psychology professor, who is interested in the paranormal for his own personal reasons, and they set out on a quest to find the answer to Sylvie's problem. How far would you go to help your child, as crazy as the idea seems? They stumble upon a mystery that was never solved, a family torn apart by a loss, and the answers to their questions. This book consumed me. There are times when I hurry through the book because I hate it, and then there are times like these that I do the same because I want to know what happens. I stay up late in the night reading, and I finish the book in a couple of sittings. I'm so grateful to the person on bookcrossing who lent it to me, otherwise, I may not have ever read it. Also, the descriptions of Ireland were so detailed and realistic, I could swear that I was there again. Even more amazing is the fact that the author said she wrote the descriptions while using a guide book. The authors writing is also so haunting because I could feel the loneliness of the characters, all of those that were missing something, and those that wanted to connect with another. Ignore the cover and the title (My edition has a little blonde girl wearing red, solemnly looking out the window as you see her reflection in it) and read a great book!

I loved this book from page 1. Although this is a strange topic, the story is wonderfully written and you feel for all the charachters in different ways. The Dr. you feel is struggling to not give the mom too much hope, the mom is conflicted, she loves her child but is making so many sacrifices for her. The child, well, she's a child and she's not sure why nobody's listening to her. The friend is trying to salvage the relationship between the parents even though the children have issues. It's painful and joyous at the same time. I loved this book!

Margaret Leroy delves into a fascinating subject this novel, that of past lives and how a delicate four-year-old girl is life is irrevocably affected by an event that happened over a decade ago. Full of brittle and fragile detail, Leroy's gorgeous prose, captures the struggling angst of Grace Reynolds as she struggles to raise her four-year-old daughter Sylvie. Sylvie, an only child, enjoys the complete attention of Grace, her father Dominic unwilling to acknowledge her, more concerned with his own family excluding both grace and Sylvie. At a party for Lennie, Sylvie's best friend, suddenly and unexpectedly, there's a commotion. Water is everywhere, a scrabble of boys near the bowl, and Sylvie screaming, and then Grace's sense of dread. While brittle body is wracked with tension, the reason for her outbursts, her sadness and crying and her fear is unexplainable at best, the sense that there's something about Sylvie that is utterly beyond Grace. More worrying is Sylvie's strange phobia of water and a house she draws over and over with a blue border and the doors and windows always just the same. And of course there's the perpetual nightmares even as she comes into Grace's room. The sounds of her sobbing tugging at her, hauling Grace up from the surface of her dreams, the thoughts of life with Dominic "constantly dancing in the margins of her mind." Grace seems to be battered and buffeted on all fronts. As she goes home to her empty and cold flat in Highlands, she ekes out a living working in a flower shop only her boss Lavinia offers her kindness, an old hippy with her willow wands and patchwork scraps of fabric, who tells Grace that only she knows what's right for Sylvie. Even the staff at Sylvie's nursery, just can't control the little girl, the stern and a little distant Mrs. Pace-Barden constantly complaining to grace about Sylvie's the constant temper tantrums. This first part of this tale, in particular, perfectly captures, Grace's sense of restriction she had of walls that press in whichever way she turns, the surging of frustration and the sense of this life unfolding before her, this unraveling of everything she's tried to knit together: "The patching up and making do." Grace is desperate for more information about Sylvie, the answers appearing in a newspaper article, with stories of ghosts and that of Dr. Adam Winters, who investigates psychic phenomenon and who is in turn haunted by the accident that caused the death of his brother. As Grace finally recounts a sad confession to Adam : "it's like Sylvie's slipping away from me. It's like she doesn't see me or recognize me," both Grace and Adam travel to the small seaside Irish village of Coldharbour looking for answers, a hint of meaning, Adam wanting to find a way of living with his brother's death while Grace searches for answers. Leroy plunges us into her sad, haunting, and melancholy tale that moves from the dark days of London with the raw, searching wind, its smells of smoke an