A Bigamist's Daughter

I've read a few later Alice McDermott books, ones that centre more around Irish-American families, and while I can't say I adored them, they certainly struck me more than this book, one of her first, if not her very first, novels. <i>A Bigamist's Daughter</i>, well, I just can't quite figure out what this book is supposed to be about, or even how it is about it. It's fairly mediocre.<br /><br />Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/349383-goodreads-this-is-not-okay?chapter=1" rel="nofollow noopener">here</a>.<br /><br />In the meantime, you can read the entire review at <a href="http://smorgasbook.blogspot.ca/2014/05/a-bigamists-daughter-by-alice-mcdermott.html" rel="nofollow noopener">Smorgasbook</a>

I have read many books were I didn't really like it, but was still able to appreciate it and finish it. This was different because I just didn't like it at all. (I did finish it though)<br /><br />I feel like the whole book should be read with melancholy music in the background...imagine it and that's how the whole book is like...except a thousand times more pretentious. The main character of Elizabeth lives her whole life with herself as the tortured female lead in her own mental drama. She manipulates the people at work and in her personal life. She is an editor-in-chief at a vanity press and comes to enjoy the manipulation she doles out to people who believe her when she says their book is the stuff of great literary fiction. <br /><br />The love story between her and aspiring author Tupper Daniels is crap. They hit all the points but there is no sincerity on either end...I think that's the way it's supposed to be for her...but I don't know if it was purposeful for him. Flat out, I didn't believe it from the beginning. I kept expecting something to be reveled that would explain everything, and it never came. I think what was supposed to pass as an explanation was just plain confusing...like I am supposed to read between the lines, but they criss cross. <br /><br />In the end I thought this novel was pretentious, poorly executed, and way too reliant on melodrama.

In a novel that dissects, deconstructs and recreates the fabric of life, love and literature, the author spotlights the world of publishing; the mythology of love, the elusiveness of the love object – all as the centerpiece of this work – formulate the basis for this story.<br /><br />We begin with Elizabeth Connelly, a single woman living in New York – some time in the twentieth century, before computers or the current Internet generation – and discover her real life as an “editor-in-chief” at what is known in that day as a “vanity press.” She meets her potential authors, praises their work – even when it is less than stellar – and signs them to contracts. They pay their fee and dream their dreams.<br /><br />But one day she meets an author – Tupper Daniels, a southern gentleman – and in helping him “create an ending” for his unfinished manuscript, she stumbles down a path of exploration that leads her into the surreal world of elusive fathers – traveling fathers like her own – who are leading secret lives. Questioning all the stories told her by her mother, and examining her own tendency to tell tales – even create myths – about her own past loves, she begins to understand that fantasies, illusions and love myths have a life of their own, flourishing because of the necessity to preserve those very myths.<br /><br />Fascinating portrayal of love, literature, and the elusive nature of dreams, “A Bigamist’s Daughter” is a memorable novel that earns five stars.<br />

3.5 stars. Alice McDermott’s <i>A Bigamist’s Daughter</i> is her first novel, Alice McDermott before she became ALICE MCDERMOTT. Its themes foreshadow McDermott’s later novels: Catholicism, moral ambiguity, absent fathers. Its style also foreshadows McDermott’s later novels: emotional precision, unresolved ending, and movement backwards and forwards over time. But <i>A Bigamist’s Daughter</i> is wordier in places than McDermott’s later novels; its most believable and affecting character is Elizabeth, the young editor at its center; and McDermott portrays her other main characters— Elizabeth’s lover and Elizabeth’s mother—from the outside in, rather than convince me of them emotionally from the inside out. The central mysteries at the core of <i>A Bigamist’s Daughter</i>—just what was Elizabeth’s father and why did her mother stay with him—also felt somewhat unconvincing. I was left not understanding <i>why</i>. Why was Elizabeth’s father so loved? Why did Elizabeth’s mother remain married to him? <i>A Bigamist’s Daughter</i> is well worth reading for McDermott completists and admirers of such McDermott novels as <i>The Ninth Hour</i> and <i>Charming Billy</i>. But I wouldn’t recommend starting your McDermott reading with <i>A Bigamist’s Daughter</i>.

I have read a few other Alice McDermott novels with admiration, but if A Bigamist's Daughter had been my introduction, I would have stopped reading her after this. I can see suggestions in this book of the writer that she becomes, even by her second novel, but in this book she does not seem to have a hold on her talent yet. It just doesn't come together. We spend too much time with secondary characters who drop away; there are too many scenes that don't seem to have much bearing on the whole. We never really get to know any of the characters. And though it's clear that McDermott consciously chose her points of view, I found her switching between third and first person to be disruptive. As one character says, "...some authors just take a while to get a following....some need to develop a momentum." This seems to be the case with Alice McDermott. But she does develop a "momentum" and her talent comes to the fore in her other books.

This book may be interesting if you subscribe to a traditional view of gender and believe that women are innately tied to and less than men. <br /><br />Otherwise, avoid this.

Man this book was hard to follow... I think there might've been an awesome story in there somewhere...if only I could've found it.

This first novel by Alice McDermott displays all her best qualities: wit, striking imagery, and troubled hearts drawn with a delicate touch.

<br /><br />There is a lot of bigamy going on in this novel by outstanding talent Alice McDermott. First is the bigamy that marked the life of Elizabeth (the first person focus of the novel.) Her father was the possessor of more than one family and Elizabeth has been dealing with the conflicts her knowledge of her father’s predilections cause within her. Second, as “editor-in-chief” of the Vista Books vanity press in New York, her somnolent, desperately lonely life becomes invigorated by a young southern writer and his manuscript about a bigamist. As the “editor,” of a vanity press, her main duties include getting the client (author) to sign a contract that allows them to pay for the publishing of their own book, which Tupper Daniels wants to do. Unlike most of her clients, Tupper seems to understand the workings of a vanity press but still wants to work with Elizabeth since he cannot find an ending. Elizabeth being lonely and Tupper handsome and gracious, they soon end up as more than client and editor. Here’s where the multiple-level bigamy comes in: Elizabeth is still coping with the disappearance of Billy, a former boyfriend, whom she cannot get over. Throughout the book, Elizabeth tries to deal honestly with the love she still harbors for Billy and we begin to sense it is going to block everything for her. She and Tupper take some romantic trips and Tupper questions her deeply about the bigamist in his novel, her father and, eventually, her feelings about Billy. Elizabeth is dealing with the very likely fact that bigamists can be good people—that they can actually love at least two people equally—the situation Elizabeth finds herself in. It only complicates matters that relations with her mother became strained, in part because of her father’s actions, and her death is a turning point in the novel. Tupper is a very nice guy and a decent writer. He deeply loves Elizabeth but he still doesn’t have an ending for his novel. This is not an action-packed read. The dialogues are strained and subtle and profoundly complex, but that’s what makes it a fascinating read. A lot of your reaction to the book may depend on your attitudes toward love and marriage and bigamy, but that’s sort of the point! Though written over thirty years ago, the reader should not feel any time imperative pushing the actions along. The feelings and problems are infinite and McDermott wisely takes her time dealing with them. Nevertheless, this makes a terrific summer read.

3.5 rounded up. <br /><br />The spoiler is, there isn't any real bigamist in the book--perhaps the father was (a traveling "government" worker) but there's no proof and no other family. The daughter and mother never really discuss it, which is one of the points made from a man writing a book about a bigamist--how the wives never really ask, so the man never has to lie. Perhaps he just liked to travel, just as the missing father image in A Glass Menagerie who was a "telephone worker who fell in love with long-distance." The writer lays out the philosophy that a bigamist is a true romantic because he falls in love again and again, and wants to commit, vs. just having an affair. <br /><br />The best part for me was when it was discussed that perhaps a woman (the grandmother) may have been the bigamist and the writer just dismisses it out of hand--that all his lofty arguments about a bigamist only holds true for men and women can't reach that level. <br /><br />I also liked it when a woman pointed out that one "commits" bigamy, but you don't "commit" monogamy or marriage. <br /><br />The basic plot of an editor working at a vanity press was really interesting and Elizabeth, the main character, is a romantic vision in her own right. She loved so much once that he couldn't measure up to her ideals, so she left him. As good an excuse as any!