Author: Comyns, Barbara

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 22 January 2026 by Little, Brown Book Group (Virago Press Ltd) in the United Kingdom as part of 'the Virago Modern Classics' series.

Paperback | 176 pages
127 x 197 x 15 | 144g

'A small Gothic masterpiece . . . I have read it many times, and with every re-read I marvel again at its many qualities' SARAH WATERS'A wonderful and original novel' ALAN HOLLINGHURST'The strange off-beat talent of Barbara Comyns [whose] innocent eye observes with child-like simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrence' GRAHAM GREENE 'Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else' MAGGIE O'FARRELLI comforted myself with the knowledge that at least I wasn't earthbound like most people.

In a house full of screeching animals in Edwardian South London, Alice lives in the shadow of her domineering father. Longing to escape, she retreats ever deeper into a world of memories, fantasies and rapturous longings - until she discovers an extraordinary secret power of her own. But the strange events that unfold lead her, dressed in bridal white, to a scene of ecstatic triumph and disaster among the crowds on Clapham Common. Blackly funny and indelibly haunting, The Vet's Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge.

INTRODUCED BY JANE GARDAM