THE DAUGHTER

A gripping book, but so unpleasant in its details, so unpalatable in its aftertaste that one questions the extent of its appeal. A deeply emotional story of a girl whose life was set awry by a mother who clutched at youth and emotional sensation, all the time undermining the foundations of her daughter's sense of security and ideals. The story focuses on a trip to Florida, where the girl's own passions first come to fruition -- and where she shipwrecks an already unstable emotional being. She can't take it. This is bare bones skeleton of a story whose implications are deeper than the events, but the whole is marred by vulgarisms that seem scarcely necessary to the psychological unity and the quality of the finer parts of the study, Told in stream of consciousness manner. To me, it lacks the integrity of her earlier book, Memory of Love.