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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?
"Written with attention to musicality and the murmuring backdrop of the incessant ocean, this inventive story captures the mystery, tragic loss, and beauty of Hans Christian Andersen's original mermaid tale while thoughtfully and passionately updating it. - Publishers Weekly
"Claycomb's fine first novel…is numinous and lovely." - Booklist
"A truly enchanting tale beautifully told." - Menna van Praag, author of The Dress Shop of Dreams
"Ann Claycomb's characters stayed on in my imagination long after I put the book down. Anyone who reads it will never look at The Little Mermaid the same way again." - Kim van Alkemade, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan #8
"A dark and compelling twist on a beloved fairy tale that will make you redefine happily ever after." - Ellen Herrick, author of The Sparrow Sisters
"In The Mermaid's Daughter, Ann Claycomb harnesses the grandeur of opera to bring to life a classic fairytale for the present day. This is a moving, fascinating, beautifully-rendered debut." - Emily Mitchell, author of The Last >
This information about The Mermaid's Daughter was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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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