Carole Tyrrell worked in the theatre for nearly 10 years and was always fascinating by the way death and the supernatural formed many of the greatest and most enduring works. She has read crime fiction for many years and enjoys the broad range of the genre.
Jane Harris is back.
After a year of mourning the loss of Mary, her beloved (and the eponymous favourite daughter) in a tragic accident, she’s ready to resume her life with her remaining family. She’s reclaiming her throne and as she puts it, ‘like a queen who has been in exile but returns with pomp and circumstance.’
But her loyal subjects, her husband David and remaining daughter Betsy, appear to be unaware of this celebratory homecoming. They’ve been too busy making their own plans during Jane’s mourning period; plans of their escape from her, and her rule.
Jane can’t allow the breakdown of her ‘happy’ family unit.
Favourite Daughter is a first-person narrative from the point-of-view of Jane. The book’s events unfold over the four days leading up to her daughter Betsy’s high-school graduation. Betsy’s planning to leave home, for college. Her husband David has secretly bought a new house.
Jane’s a control-freak and will go to any length to control her family’s life, intercepting their phone messages, concealing tracking devices in their cars and she even bugs her daughter’s bedrooms.
Eldest daughter Mary fell from a local park clifftop and into the sea where she drowned. A tragic accident or was it?
Anonymous letters begin to circulate through Jane’s circle containing insinuations that daughter Betsy was somehow involved in Mary’s death. She confronts Betsy’s ex-boyfriend Josh, who reveals new information about that fateful night. Jane ponders upon Betsy’s graduation ceremony, which will lead to her remaining daughter leaving home.
Jane is not a sympathetic or likable character, though she’s a grieving mother who has begun to suspect that her beloved daughter Mary’s tragic death may be something more sinister. Jane herself is unhappy and dissatisfied with life, and her 22-year-old marriage. She still lives fantasies about being a famous Hollywood actress, despite having chosen husband David for security, instead of the precarious dreams of a future in Tinseltown.
Jane is a text-book example of a narcissist; believing every man she encounters instantly desires her, while all women envy her.
The reader has to decide if Jane is a reliable narrator. The author peppers monologues involving her own mother’s car-accident and the death of the Cash, the family dog.
Jane also appears a manipulative puppeteer not averse to spreading rumours about friends and neighbours; doing so, for what she terms ‘fun’. Jane also reveals knowledge about her two daughter’s movements in the park on that fateful night that Mary fell to her death. But how much does she really know about what happened?
It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Jane, even as her house of cards teeters during this examination of the family life of a narcissist, and the lives that encircle.
Favourite Daughter would make an engrossing holiday read making you ponder about the people around you, and their real motivations.
