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Book Reviewed by:From the book jacket: It's 1979, and
seven-year-old Abby, the youngest member of the close-knit Santerre
family, is trapped indoors with the chicken pox during a heat wave. The
events set in motion that summer will span decades and continents,
change the Santerres forever, and surprise and amaze anyone who loved
Meloy's Liars and Saints.
A rich, full novel about passion and desire, fear and betrayal, A
Family Daughter illuminates both the joys and complications of
contemporary life, and the relationship between truth and fiction. For
everyone who has yet to meet the Santerres, an unmatched pleasure
awaits.
Comment: A Family Daughter isn't so much a sequel to
Meloy's debut novel, Liars and Saints, as it is a parallel story.
In
Liars and Saints Meloy told the story of four generations of the
Santerre family from World War II to the present. In A Family
Daughter we meet the same people but from a different perspective.
At the center of this tale is Abby, the granddaughter of Yvette and
Teddy Senterre who we first meet in 1973 when she is 7-years-old.
Following the many twists and turns of her young life (which I won't
reveal to avoid spoiling the plot) she publishes a highly
autobiographical novel, Liars and Saints. Meloy juxtaposes the
'fictional' Liars and Saints with the 'real' A Family Daughter
to tell a story that stands alone in either book but, when combined
together packs (in the words of Kirkus Reviews) "a seismic wallop".
"Meloy's Santerres may just be the most fascinating, engrossing American family since the Louds." - The Los Angeles Times.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in February 2006, and has been updated for the
February 2007 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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