"[A] darkly glittering tale. We are inside a howl....The writing is streamlined, forensic.
Dey’s evocations of loss are stunning. Throughout the novel, spiraling grief is shot through with spiky, often comic descriptions. ”Daughter” is a title, a curse, a mystery, a gift…
In “Daughter”, Mona wages her own war, over her power as a writer, and as a woman.
This beautiful and piercing novel is her hard-won victory.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES, FALL FICTION MUST-READ


”Daughter is a literary stick of dynamite–incendiary and exposing painful truths about art, family, and systemic inequities. Claudia Dey writes about the fraught relationship between a woman and her novelist father, as she tries to build her own creative career in his shadow. Both a study of intimate manipulations and the trope of the male genius, Daughter is a novel that ricochets between uncomfortable emotions and social constructs with fearlessness and intent.”

—CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION, 2024 JURY CITATION


“An unflinching yet tender look into the dark heart of family-inflicted trauma, and the love that persists in spite of betrayal . . . Daughter is a raw, robust portrait of a young woman’s loss––
and the courage she needs to live with it."

ELLE MAGAZINE, A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Breathless, two-sitting reading…I couldn’t help but think of Ferrante…how the greatest stakes are drawn from the most domestic scenarios, how the sentences sometimes extend beyond themselves and other times conclude in a cold staccato. Never have I felt more tense about a dinner between a father and his adult daughter than I felt in the final scenes of this book…
A literary Succession. “

LIT HUB, AN UNMISSABLE FALL BOOK


“Dey’s writing feels akin to jumping into an alpine lake. For a few seconds, you’re in shock—and then suddenly, you’re overwhelmed with sensation, hyperconscious of your own aliveness and its perverse proximity to numb unfeeling. The immediacy is unnerving, addictive, almost frightening.”

INTERVIEW MAGAZINE


Gorgeous and unflinching.

NYLON


Searing and poetic… Line by line, Dey evokes an unsparing style with razor-sharp insight
and a brooding dramatic plot that pushes Mona to decide how far she will go to protect
her relationship with her father—how far she will go to be free.”

BOMB MAGAZINE


“Controlled, lucid, and elegant. Daughter is also a formally inventive book––while still being deeply accessible––about how much we can know others, and how well we can know ourselves. Claudia Dey describes feelings and struggles I haven't encountered in other novels. I loved this beautiful book.”

SHEILA HETI, author of Pure Colour


“Daughter is a breathtaking and brilliant novel about the exquisite pain and agony that comes from loving and needing certain people in our lives to love us back, to love us better. It is also about how we are relentless animals, wild and searching, trying to get our crushed, hungry bodies into our wolf packs. I loved this beautifully written book and was profoundly moved by it, so uncompromising and so true.”

MIRIAM TOEWS, author of Women Talking


“In Daughter, Claudia Dey writes beautifully about the special claustrophobia of family and how it can rearrange both art and life.”

RAVEN LEILANI, author of Luster


Wry, furious…Dey’s fluid, feverish sentences are beautiful and unexpected.

THE WALRUS



”I will go wherever Claudia Dey takes me with her prose––always elegant, yet brimming with colour and sharpness, it never fails to breathe new life. I loved Daughter in all its gorgeous power.”

SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, author of The Water Cure

“I gasped. I teared up. This book entered my soul. It is original, seductive and so alive. Claudia Dey is a phenomenal and profound writer, and with Daughter, she has drawn a perfect circle.”

LESLIE FEIST, musician


“Daughter reads like a thrilling fever dream. Claudia Dey has figured out the recipe for a novel that becomes a climate, as immersive, honest, and addictive as family.”

MARIE-HELENE BERTINO, author of Parakeet