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ADOPTED DAUGHTER by Dorothy Clewes

ADOPTED DAUGHTER

By

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 1968
Publisher: Coward-McCann

A bastard searches for her parents' names, in what amounts to a seedy magazine story with grunts rather than grit. Cathy hates it when the girls giggle about weddings ""and then a man in your bed for ever and ever more. And after that, babies. . . . They didn't know that she'd happened because two people had gone to bed without being married."" Now Mare is dead, and she goes to live with overprotective sister Dale who has--for almost seventeen years--avoided telling little sister that she is really little daughter. The rest of the family--""brother"" Morris and his bitchy wife, ""sister"" Lawrie and her lecher-y husband--interact apparently just for the hell of it. Cathy meets Christopher on the train, a starting film-maker now doing commercials for the money; she sees him secretly until budding ""niece"" Jane (fourteen) tags along and starts sneaking out with fortyish Phil. It all comes out in the wash-out ending: Dale owns up when Cathy runs out (to have her hair cut), Morris uncovers some clippings about the nowdeceased father, Christopher begins thinking about doing something with a little more integrity. Gauche, tactless, sleazy.