Lucy Fricke’s Daughters is the second V&Q Books launch title I’ve reviewed in a week. Each is very different from the other, yet both are concerned with families and how they shape us. Whereas Sandra Hoffmann’s Paula was a moving piece of cathartic autofiction, Daughters is a road novel with a sharply comic edge which sees two best friends brought face-to-face with their long absent fathers.
Our fathers had never been reliable. The more we learned about them, the less we knew
In the final stages of cancer, Martha’s father wants her to drive him to Switzerland to die. Quite a favour to ask given he’s been largely absent from her life for thirty years. There’s only one person who can help her with this miserable task so she calls Betty, her oldest friend, who has her own father issues. These two middle-aged women – one desperate to start a family before it’s too late, the other a blocked writer leading a rackety life travelling while renting out her Berlin flat to tourists – set out on the oddest of road trips with Kurt in the back seat. Then, after spending what’s to be his last night in a hotel which fails to live up to its internet billing, Kurt gets a phone call. It seems there’s unfinished business with his first love and he’s determined to finish it. Perhaps, Kurt hasn’t done with life yet after all. Left in charge of his ancient, beloved VW Golf, Betty and Martha take off on their own journey of discovery until Kurt calls his daughter back to him. As their paths diverge, Betty decides it’s time to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding her stepfather.
In this life, you need someone who will help you make your getaway, no matter how safe things may seem right now
Fricke unfolds her story through Betty’s often sardonic voice, a brittle exterior covering a well of hurt accumulated over decades, softening her tone a little as revelations are made. There are hints of a car accident that has compounded the damage done to both her and Martha by their fatherless childhoods and their angry mothers. By the end of their journey, which begins in Berlin and ends in Greece, secrets will have been uncovered and illusions shattered but there are hopes of redemption and recovery. What begins as an entertaining, snarkily narrated road novel turns into something more sober along the way and is all the better for it. If this is a sample of what’s on offer, I’m looking forward to seeing what other goodies V&Q Books have in store.
V&Q Books: Berlin 2020 9783863912567 203 pages Paperback
On my shelf to read soon – looking forward to it.
Pleased to hear that, Annabel. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
This is the one of the three initial books I didn’t read, but it does sound marvellous and I suspect I would have liked it as much as the others!
I loved it. Apparently, humour is very unusual in German fiction but Fricke is very good at using it. Looking to forward to V & Q’s future titles.
Ooh I really like the sound of this one. What great titles V&Q books have started with.
They certainly have! Very impressed with their list so far.
Everything about this sounds so appealing! It seems like it would make a good film too.
I think I’ve seen a Thelma and Louise comparison somewhere although it’s not a spoiler to say the ending is very different.
Another publisher to investigate!
I’m looking forward to there next tranche of titles, Janet.
This sounds like another excellent one Susan – the most interesting books I’ve been reading this year have all been works by women in translation.
I think this when taken with Paula signals that V&Q are planning to feature quite a range of writing. I wonder if your reading suggests that more books are being published by women in translation.
Probably and added to that the fact that such writers are getting more press attention.
Which can only be to the good!
I bought this one and Paula (and saving both for German Lit Month).
I’d be surprised if you didn’t like both, Kate.
What a premise for a novel. It sounds pretty great actually…so many complications to sort out amongst those relationships.
Yes, it works very well. I enjoyed the softening of narrator’s voice as she disclosed the reasons behind that brittle exterior.
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