The Doctor's Daughter

by Hilma Wolitzer

Book Overview

In her first work of fiction in more than a decade, award-winning novelist Hilma Wolitzer brilliantly renders the intimate details of ordinary life and exposes a host of hidden truths. The Doctor's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 034548584X
• ISBN13: 9780345485847
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Good Psychological Fiction

"The Doctor's Daughter" by Hilma Wolitzer is an intelligently written mystery of self-discovery. Ultimately, it is about a woman coming to terms with the person she has become. In the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Alice Brill, has a strange, malignant feeling in her chest. The book takes us on a quest to find out what ails her. Is it breast cancer? Is it a failing in her marriage--a failing in her career? Why did her mother's literary career suddenly stop when she was a child? What seems to be dying inside her: Is it her body or her soul? Both Alice and her husband are highly educated literary scholars who married with a lovely dream of supporting each other's successful literary career. But after more than two decades of marriage, Alice only sees herself as "a failed Scheherazade who couldn't keep anybody alive with her stories." Instead of creating literature, she earns her living as an editor, a book doctor. She buries her dream of creating her own works of fiction, instead she doctors others' works. Her husband also must bury his literary ambitions after the financial realities of their first child's birth make him take a position in his family's printing business. The novel takes us on a journey of recollections through Alice's life. Along the way, we get to know her mother, the successful published poet who suddenly stops publishing. Why? We get to know her father, the brilliant, autocratic, narcissistic surgeon. All her life, Alice has a lived in the cocoon fiction of her parent's marital bliss. But is that true? She sees possibilities that all may not have been right with their marriage. Her father is now in a nursing home in the later stage of Alzheimer's, so he is little help in leading her toward the answers to her questions. There seems to be something important that happened back when she was a child that is somehow at the root of the blindingly white, bad feelings that keep reccurring. Along the path toward Alice's destiny with self-discovery, are subplots of therapy, lust, friendship, and marital infidelity. "The Doctor's Daughter" is good, intelligent, psychological fiction. I look forward to reading more by Hilma Wolitzer. In my estimation, this author can rest assured that she is not, like her protagonist, "a failed Scheherazade."

An elegant meditation on the balance between art and love, as well as an intriguing mystery

Fifty-one year old Alice Brill awakens one morning knowing something is very much wrong. She feels it deep in her breastbone where she has always received terrible news. She knows that what is amiss is a personal problem, not a worldwide issue. However, she has no idea what exactly the mysterious foreboding is about. Naturally, Alice's life isn't perfect. She lost her job as an editor in a publishing house but has mostly recovered from the sorrow of that blow. She now finds satisfaction in her work as an independent book doctor. Her father has slid into senility and currently resides in a nursing home; her mother is long dead. Alice and her husband Ev are arguing frequently, with many disagreements centered on their underachieving, misdirected son Scott. Could her sudden unhappiness be simply disappointment in her own life? After all, she had once taken satisfaction in writing fiction, as had Ev. Both of them have let their art go in order to work at jobs to support a family. Alice is particularly intrigued by a novel manuscript she is editing and becomes more and more fascinated by the author, a young man in Michigan far from Alice in New York. She finds herself looking forward to his emails and phone calls. Can this untoward attraction be the mysterious trouble of which she remains constantly aware? Alice also wonders if an unresolved puzzle from the past could contribute to her unease. While delving through the paperwork of her mother, a published poet, she stumbles across a mystery. Hidden away, she finds intriguing letters and a poem new to Alice. Could her mother have had a secret life? As she reads the poem, she discovers something alarming in her own body. And all the while, she is constantly conscious of that strange sensation of impending doom: something is wrong or will soon go wrong. As time goes by, Alice begins to wonder if she has made up her own life in a manner similar to times in the past when she wrote fiction. What is the truth about her existence, and what has she only taken as reality? If her past as she remembers it isn't factual, how will she delve into it, since her main link to the long-ago is her now senile father? That urgent feeling of impending trouble eventually comes to be realized in many facets of her life. As her father once would have said, now she has something to cry about. Alice continues to be haunted by the locked door in her past --- an actual physical locked door and a symbolic one. In order to understand herself and her place in her world, she must find the key, and yet it eludes her. In the meantime, her complicated, messy present life surges around her. In her father's rare moments of lucidity, he seems to offer her brief tantalizing clues. Or does he? It's impossible to tell given his state of mind, and Alice's own. THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER is an elegant meditation on the balance between art and love. It is also an intriguing mystery complete with subtle twists in the plot. The novel's people are

Marvelous Book

I loved this book. Great characters and a compelling story. I only wish I could read The Doctor's Daughter for the first time again.

Worth the wait for another book from this talented author!

I love this author so I was excited to read her newest book, especially since there was such a long hiatus between books. As I read, I couldn't help but wonder if Hilma Wolitzer drew on her own experience and if this helped explain the long wait between books. Everything just seemed so real that it made sense that she'd have been writing from personal experience, at least to some degree. Based on her real life or not, this one is absolutely spell-binding, filled with characters that come alive and with a world which was so engaging that I didn't want to leave it, didn't want to finish the book. At the heart of the book is Alice, in her 50s, a wife, a mother, a frustrated writer...and who is facing way too much pressure as one crisis after another emerges. She is being demoted at work, her children aren't turning out as she expected and her marriage is in major crisis. As if that wasn't enough, she has an aging parent to handle, leading to a review of her past, of her entire life. I really related to this book, not because I face similar crisises in my life (at least, not yet) but because the writing was so sure and authentic. Everything seemed believeable and, as the best books so often do, this one revealed how hard true growth can be - but how necessary to a fulfilling life. Read this one carefully and you'll find yourself feeling richer for the experience - and perhaps even a bit wiser - all while being entertained by a very fine writer. What more could one ask?

The characters are REAL, making this a REALLY great read

I obtained an ARC (advanced review copy) of this book and read it over the weekend with the intention of finishing it before the official book release date of Feb 28th. I reveled in the fact that I had a jump-start on everyone else. The characters are very, very real which makes it a great read. I highly recommend The Doctor's Daughter! The protagonist is in the middle of her life, struggling to figure things out while juggling work, a father with Alzheimer's, grown children, a rift in her marriage, a blunt best friend, a young love interest, returning to her passion of writing, and a feeling inside that something isn't right. I won't ruin the story for you. But I will tell you that it comes as close to real life as I have read in a long time. That may be because I am also a writer and run workshops helping people get over writer's block. It may also be because I am in the middle of my life and am facing doubts, questions, and passions. Whatever the case, the main character has stuck with me. And that is the sign of a great story. Bonnie Neubauer, author of Write-Brain Workbook, inventor of Story Spinner, www.BonnieNeubauer.com