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Random House (hard cover) 1998
Scribner (paper) 1999
Called “John Cheever’s heir apparent” by The New York Times Book Review, and compared by Time to Henry James and Edith Wharton, Roxana Robinson has established a reputation as a perceptive chronicler of the carefully hidden realities of WASP family life.
This Is My Daughter is the intense, closely examined story of the second marriage of two divorced parents. Both Peter and Emma have young daughters and both are profoundly committed to the task of forming a new family – one better than those they left, one bonded by love and trust. Their daughters, however, are not partners in this venture, but helpless and unhappy participants. Instead of commitment to the new family, the girls, like all children of divorce, feel sorrow, loss and a longing for their earlier lives.
The novel charts the course of this newly formed family, that starts with such good intentions, but struggles increasingly under the weight of such opposing desires. The tensions and complexities grow steadily more powerful as the years pass, and the story moves inexorably to a stunning and emotional climax.
“Roxana Robinson’s amazing new novel is about insightful people who go too long without introspecting, and about judicious people who quite simply make errors in judgment. I love the way her characters come to consciousness, and the way the reader is always brought up short along with them. Reading it, I felt sure we're all in this together: our defenses quickly invoked only to be worn down, while at the same time we were increasingly experiencing life with our eyes wide open – with the hope held out by the author that eventually our hearts might open as well. It’s a very impressive book.”
- Ann Beattie
From: Amazon.com
"If divorce rips a family apart, can a second marriage mend the tear, piecing the remnants together into one big Brady Bunch quilt? Of course not. In This Is My Daughter, New Yorkers Peter Chatfield and Emma Kirkland learn this the hard way. Roxana Robinson--whose dissection of WASP mores in Asking for Love and Summer Light earned her comparisons to such white-shoe masters as John Cheever, Edith Wharton, and Henry James--is on familiar ground here, placing Peter and Emma within the gilded cocoon of Manhattan's Upper East Side. Recently divorced, socially superior, and smarting from subhuman ex-spouses, the two have much in common, not least the desire to marry again. Emma's daughter, Tess, warms to the idea immediately. But for Peter's sullen seven-year-old, this union signals a disaster rather than a fresh start: "Amanda could not be happy that her father was marrying Emma.... She was already, at seven, in mourning for her life, for her past and happy life, that other world." Over the next eight years, Amanda's inability to deal with her father's remarriage, which the adults dismiss as mere adolescent angst, becomes a sizable thorn in the family's side. Despite all of Peter and Emma's best-laid plans--private schools, a picture-perfect summer home in New England, tennis clinics, invites to exclusive parties--Amanda grows increasingly alienated, and with one desperate act she forces the family to peel back their moneyed exterior and examine the heart of the matter. In This Is My Daughter, Robinson has created a skillful and sensitive portrayal of divorce and its post-nuclear-family fallout.”
From: Publishers Weekly:
“The terrain of upper-middle-class WASP families and the country of divorce are explored with perceptive candor in Robinson's powerful and affecting novel. Emma Goodwin and Peter Chatfield move in the socially elite circles of Manhattan's Upper East Side. When they marry after having divorced their first spouses, each brings a daughter to the new union. Three-year-old Tessa, Emma's child, is adorable and secure, but seven-year-old Amanda, Peter's already difficult daughter, proves sullen, and rebellious. Although she can't admit it to herself, Emma favors and nurtures her own daughter, while Peter, not recognizing Amanda's fear and misery, is annoyed by her continuing defiance. Through insidious undercurrents of resentment and periodic confrontations, Amanda's self-confidence is eventually destroyed. Robinson is particularly adept at conveying the nuances of children's thoughts and behavior, and she sees clearly that they are the real victims of divorce, though readers feel equal sympathy for all players in the drama. Robinson renders the girls' bickering, Amanda's scornful negativity, and the guilt and recrimination that erode the Chatfields' marriage with emotional authority. These scenes occur against the convincingly textured background of private clubs and summer homes, the snobbish pride in blood over money and, sometimes, the cultivation of stingy economy over unseemly display. The last third of the book is hypnotic and achingly real, all too imaginable for parents who will recognize that unconscious acts have their tragic consequences. The author of two collections of short stories, the novel Summer Light and a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, Robinson writes lucid and graceful prose that shines with compassion and wisdom about human frailty.”
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From: The New York Times:
“Often compared to John Cheever…but Robinson’s latest novel made me think of an earlier literary forebear, Henry James.”
From: Minneapolis Star Tribune:
“Nearly perfect prose…there isn’t an awkward phrase or false note in the entire work. Robinson depicts this family’s struggle to survive with unerring intelligence and grace.”