A Daughter's a Daughter (1952) by Mary Westmacott aka Agatha Christie #1952Club

🟢 I am still struggling to catch up with my reviews, but I can't possibly skip submitting one or two for the #1952Club, can I? So here's the first, an audiobook of a Mary Westmacott's novel. Though I've been reading Agatha Christie's crime novels since teenager, this was actually my first of Westmacott's. I've heard that some of them are rather bleak, and this one confirmed that.

🟢 Ann Prentice is a middle-aged widow who lives with one daughter and a servant-slash-companion. She's been leading a quiet and happy life, and it seems that her only worry, at present, is what she's going to do after her daughter became independent as a young woman. That's when a complication is thrown on her, in the shape of a widower called Richard Cauldfield, with whom she's falling in love, but of whom, her daughter Sarah is disagree.

🟢 Richard Cauldfield is a shy, stubborn, insecure man, who in general dislikes modern women. Naturally he dislikes Sarah from the first, but feels the need of being kind to her, resulting in a series of blunders, which makes Sarah hates him even more. Confronted with constant quarrels and bickering between the two, Ann is torn between her love for her daughter and her lover. The first would mean she'll have to sacrifice her own happiness. What will a mother do in this circumstance?

🟢 The plot seems like a simple one, and honestly, I had never expected that this book would be a thought-provoking psychological drama. I'm already familiar with Christie's psychological analysis in her crime stories (it's this side that made me loving her in the first place), and this one feels like she was presented at last with an opportunity to freely play with it. And didn't she do it wholeheartedly! The result is a very powerful, poignant phycological dissection of each character, in a conflict. And it's the kind of process that we could relate much - the sacrifices we make for our loved ones; the lies we make that what we do are for others' good; and the denials that we are fine. We just live with it thinking that everything's fine, until a clear-headed someone bluntly scolds us and opens our eyes. This someone in this story is Dame Laura Whitstable, an old friend of Ann, and an expert in psychology - whom I suspect was Christie's own voice.

🟢 It's a brilliant, thought-provoking story that makes you reflect about happiness. Is it worth fighting for one's personal happiness, even if it means making others uncomfortable or even unhappy?

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Read this book for:

The 1952 Club

hosted by Simon @ Stuck in a Book & Karen @ Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings