Barbara Comyns Carr

In a novel that borrows from the Grimm fable of the same name, Gertrude, an older woman, becomes the friend of a lonely scarred girl named Bella

The Vet's Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge. The vet lives with his bedridden wife and shy daughter Alice in a sinister London suburb. He works constantly, captive to a strange private fury, and treats his family with brutality and contempt. After his wife's death, the vet takes up with a crass, …