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    The Mermaid's Daughter: A Novel
    The Mermaid's Daughter: A Novel
    The Mermaid's Daughter: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Mermaid's Daughter: A Novel

    Written by Ann Claycomb

    Narrated by Shannon McManus, Alana Kerr Collins, Suzan Crowley and Dominic Keating

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    About this audiobook

    A modern-day expansion of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, this unforgettable debut novel weaves a spellbinding tale of magic and the power of love as a descendent of the original mermaid fights the terrible price of saving herself from a curse that has affected generations of women in her family.

    Kathleen has always been dramatic. She suffers from the bizarre malady of experiencing stabbing pain in her feet. On her sixteenth birthday, she woke screaming from the sensation that her tongue had been cut out. No doctor can find a medical explanation for her pain, and even the most powerful drugs have proven useless. Only the touch of seawater can ease her pain, and just temporarily at that.

    Now Kathleen is a twenty-five-year-old opera student in Boston and shows immense promise as a soprano. Her girlfriend Harry, a mezzo in the same program, worries endlessly about Kathleen's phantom pain and obsession with the sea. Kathleen's mother and grandmother both committed suicide as young women, and Harry worries they suffered from the same symptoms. When Kathleen suffers yet another dangerous breakdown, Harry convinces Kathleen to visit her hometown in Ireland to learn more about her family history.

    In Ireland, they discover that the mystery—and the tragedy—of Kathleen’s family history is far older and stranger than they could have imagined.  Kathleen’s fate seems sealed, and the only way out is a terrible choice between a mermaid’s two sirens—the sea, and her lover. But both choices mean death… 

    Haunting and lyrical, The Mermaid’s Daughter asks—how far we will go for those we love? And can the transformative power of music overcome a magic that has prevailed for generations?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 7, 2017
    ISBN9780062673718
    Author

    Ann Claycomb

    Ann Claycomb’s fiction has been published in American Short Fiction, Zahir, Fiction Weekly, Brevity, Hot Metal Bridge, The Evansville Review, Title Goes Here, and other publications. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has an MFA in fiction from West Virginia University.

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    Reviews for The Mermaid's Daughter

    4/5

    45 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I loved The Mermaid's Daughter. The dark tale drew me in immediately and would not let me go. Each character carried their personal pain throughout the story and was forced to face it in different ways.The ebb and flow of the voices as each chapter is told from a different character's perspective fit the story perfectly like the waves breaking and retreating from the shore. The sea has more than a physical presence here.Song and voice, light and dark, above and below, fairy tale and opera. There are no happy endings here - only choices that lead to variations on sadness.
    • 4/5
      This was similar to Hans Christian Andersen's, The Little Mermaid, but with a modern day twist. Kathleen has always suffered from intense pain in her legs and sometimes her tongue feels as though it is being cut. Her grandmother and mother have both died young from suicides. Kathleen begins to feel she is headed in the same direction. When her girlfriend, Harry suggests they travel to Ireland to learn more about where Kathleen's mom and family were raised. In doing so, she hopes to figure out clues to what is happening to Kathleen.I enjoyed the magic of this story. It was passionate and descriptive. The only thing stopping me from giving it more starts is that the book seemed to get very long winded upon Kathleen's return from Ireland. I thought that the author could have shortened the section of how Kathleen's dad and Harry worked to find a way to save Kathleen. That part of the story just seemed to go on and on for me and I found myself speed reading to get back to the gist of the story.Overall a magical, passionate retelling of an old fashioned mermaid story! I received a complimentary copy from Librarything Early Reviewers.
    • 4/5
      The reader who does not want a tragic story should avoid The Mermaid's Daughter. The story takes every effort to make the ending something of a relief, the least terrible of several awful options, but tragedy is woven through every strand of the plot and characters. Perhaps it is inevitable, for the story is so beholden to narrative force, whether from fairy tales and the original Anderson story or the operas in which the characters are immersed.If I were told up front about the tragedy of Claycomb's book, I would not have read it. Yet the two things I was drawn to when I saw it on the Early Reviewers list are two things that almost always promise heartbreak: "The Little Mermaid" as the source plot, and an established f/f romantic couple at the center. Everyone knows (or "everyone knows" I suppose, in quotes) that TLM is inherently tragic: the mermaid loses her family or loses her lover, or both, or neither but she loses herself. Everyone knows that when a female couple begins a novel happily together, one or both will die by the end, or split up, or may as well have died.Maybe I'm spoiling the plot here, but I knew from the first chapter that these two things were inevitable and suspected my hopes to be proven wrong were in vain. Narrative force is a huge driver in the plot - some characters are actually writers who try to shape things while others are actors who recognize themselves as unable to directly change the story they play. This is almost certainly a side effect of Claycomb's literary background, and is one of the things I liked most about the book.But I don't think being able to predict the outcome of the primary plot motivations from the early pages (or thanks to this review) will ruin the book. There's a lot more that Claycomb is doing with the story, and I ultimately found it to be a solidly good book. I had a few quibbles about the structure and underlying assumptions/messages, but the writing is interesting and I only once, at the beginning, considered not continuing.My biggest problem, and the reason for nearly stopping, is the shifts in point of view. The book begins deeply in the heads of the two central women, Kathleen and Harry, then adds a Greek chorus POV by way of sea witches, then switches to a third-person narrative from Kathleen's father. The book goes back and forth through all four to develop the story, but the initial shift into third person for Robin's backstory ruined the pacing for me. I also couldn't figure out why we needed him, since that section didn't provide anything new or different. Eventually I got used to him, but I never quite felt that his parts were necessary. It seems that Claycomb brought him out to intentionally stall the pace, ratchet down the intensity, and allow for some high emotion scenes to happen off screen. Or maybe I'm missing a more metaphorical, literary purpose to Robin's pov.There are a lot of scenes with very high emotion or tension. Kathleen's mermaid symptoms are nearly indistinguishable from severe mental illness, to the point where this book is arguably about one woman's breakdown and the effect of this illness carrying through her maternal line, mother to daughter for generations. Kathleen is a soprano opera singer, her girlfriend also sings opera, and her father is a celebrated composer. The tropes and melodrama of the artform are fully present - even the chapter headings take their cue from opera. The opening scene is of Kathleen being told that she will die beautifully - it is praise for her skill, the destiny of a soprano.I do want to praise the depiction of Kathleen and Harry's relationship. I really liked the little ways that they showed they love each other, even with the spectre of Kathleen's problems always getting in the way (a fairly good example of a relationship with illness, actually). Sometimes it felt like it didn't matter that they were a f/f couple, possibly that Claycomb chose at random, then adjusted the story as necessary. I'm always appreciative of books where a gay couple simply is, and that they aren't straight is mostly irrelevant - there is no big coming out plot arc, or anything.While this isn't my favorite incorporation/retelling of The Little Mermaid (that honor belongs to a short story from one of the Windling & Datlow anthologies), and I'm hesitant to recommend The Mermaid's Daughter broadly, I clearly have a lot to talk about it, and I could go on further. I will stop here and summarize these thousand words in a nice little TL;DR:It's an interesting and worthwhile interpretation of "The Little Mermaid" which builds upon the original story, but it's incredibly tragic from start to finish, tied up in opera and mental illness. Readers who want a deeper engagement with the novel will find plenty to discuss, but that isn't required.
    • 4/5
      I received this for free from Early Reviewers and I really enjoyed the book. It's hard for me to find time to read physical books, but this one was a fast read and I finished it very quickly.I wasn't a huge fan of the flash-back/witch chapters of the book, though at the end a couple of these were okay. I don't want to get into too much about the book, since it really is an interesting departure from the Hans Christian Andersen book. It keeps his mythology, but expands upon it and brings the story into present day with a descendant of the original Little Mermaid. If you're looking for a fast read and like twisted fairy tales, this book is a good one to read. The original fairy tales were all pretty morbid and I like seeing books that acknowledge that and try to show you the story from a new point of view. Ann Claycomb did a good job with a unique perspective. I'd be interested in seeing her take on other fairy tales.
    • 4/5
      Kathleen is a young singer on her way to stardom; But, her rising star will fall tragically if she cannot find a way to overcome her lifelong afflictions. For as long as she can remember, she has been plagued with stabbing pain in her feet & a choking sensation as if her tongue were cut out. As if this were not enough, she has a connection to water that no one can understand, not even herself. In a desperate attempt to uncover the mystery behind her illness, Kathleen and her girlfriend travel to Ireland, home of her parents, in order to find out if her heritage can explain her maladies. What she finds is not what she seeks: a history of suicidal women beginning with her mother, grandmother, and all who came before her for generations. All of these women with painful afflictions, with debilitating bouts of despair & depression, with an obsession for the sea, and with no choice but to end their own lives rather than live on. As Kathleen comes closer to the secret of her ancestors, will she be strong enough to survive, or will she also choose their fate...suicide?This was a very interesting book that connected with Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," but created its' own life in the hands of Ms. Claycomb. I would be very interested to read a prequel of this book that accounted for the lives of Kathleen's ancestors. Thank you LibraryThing and William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers for the advanced copy of this delightful book! I shall be looking for that prequel!
    • 3/5
      An interesting twist on the story of Little Mermaid. Kathleen is a music student, studying opera. She suffers from pain in her feet and sometimes her mouth, but no doctors have been able to identify the cause. I have very mixed feelings about this story. I love the multi-generational approach to the story, which lends depth to the mystery. Kathleen is a bit of a drama queen, and occasionally the drama was a bit much for me. The writing was pretty good, although some scenes seemed a little forced. I was a little unsatisfied with the ending, I feel like it left important characters hanging, and I have so many questions...
    • 5/5
      We have all heard fairy tales......stories where bad turns to good, and there is always a happy ending. This book is a fairy tale of sorts. I can't promise you a happy ending, but I can promise you that you will be mesmerized from beginning to end.