At this time of the school year I am basically calling on all the powers of the novel to fend off incipient overwork-driven nervous breakdown – I roam around my apartment looking through piles of books that have been sent to me by publicists and bemoaning the lack of perfect light reading. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I plucked a volume from the shelf as being vaguely thrillerish and opened it and began reading and it turned out to be the most angelically written and chilling novel about murder and reincarnation and haunted little girls…
The novel is Margaret Leroy’s Yes, My Darling Daughter (FSG: Sarah Crichton Books), and my only complaint about it is that I think I liked the UK title better (The Drowning Girl) and do not see in this day and age why books need to be retitled for different markets – it is too big a sacrifice in the age of internet publicity.
(Full disclosure: I see from the acknowledgment that Leroy and I share an agent, Kathleen Anderson. It is a funny sideline on reading – in another book I read last year and loved, Piers Vitebsky’s The Reindeer People, Kathy’s name also popped out at me from the acknowledgments!)
