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Summary
Summary
A "beautifully written" (Hilary Mantel) story of love, madness, sisterly devotion, and control, about the two beloved daughters of renowned 1700s English painter Thomas Gainsborough, who struggle to live up to the perfect image the world so admired in their portraits.
Peggy and Molly Gainsborough--the daughters of one of England's most famous portrait artists of the 1700s and the frequent subject of his work--are best friends. They spy on their father as he paints, rankle their mother as she manages the household, and run barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly periodically experiences bouts of mental confusion, even forgetting who she is, and Peggy instinctively knows she must help cover up her sister's condition.
When the family moves to Bath, it's not so easy to hide Molly's slip-ups. There, the sisters are thrown into the whirlwind of polite society, where the codes of behavior are crystal clear. Molly dreams of a normal life but slides deeper and more publicly into her delusions. By now, Peggy knows the shadow of an asylum looms for women like Molly, and she goes to greater lengths to protect her sister's secret.
But when Peggy unexpectedly falls in love with her father's friend, the charming composer Johann Fischer, the sisters' precarious situation is thrown catastrophically off course. Her burgeoning love for Johann sparks the bitterest of betrayals, forcing Peggy to question all she has done for Molly, and whether any one person can truly change the fate of another.
A tense and tender examination of the blurred lines between protection and control, The Painter's Daughters is a searing portrait of the real girls behind the canvas. Emily Howes's debut is a stunning exploration of devotion, control, and individuality; it is a love song to sisterhood, to the many hues of life, and to being looked at but never really seen.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Psychotherapist and sketch comedy writer Howes (The Ladies) portrays sisterhood, family secrets, and mental illness in her intricate and vibrant debut. The novel takes place in late-18th-century Ipswich, England, where as young girls, Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are given free rein by their emotionally absent painter father and corralled by their society-conscious mother. Molly's bouts of sleepwalking, blackouts, and memory loss have been increasing in frequency, despite Peggy's attempts to help her sister in an era when mental illness was viewed as witchcraft and loved ones were shipped to asylums. Terrified of separation, Peggy shoulders the burden of her sister's episodes alone, a responsibility that becomes even heavier when the girls are 12 and 13 and the family moves to Bath, where they must make a good impression so their father can bring in customers for portraits. The novel is rife with secrets--including a past the sisters' mother refuses to speak about, forbidden lovers, and the mysterious interwoven story of an innkeeper's daughter and her abusive father--but the Gainsboroughs persevere through illness and betrayal. Though a rushed ending feels out of sync with the carefully laid details of the sisters' lives, Howes excels in her depiction of truth and rumors. Readers will want to linger in this singular world. Agent: Andrianna Yeatts, CAA. (Feb.)
Booklist Review
The painter of the title is the eighteenth-century British master Thomas Gainsborough, and the focus is on his daughters, Mary (Molly) and Margaret (Peggy). Early on, Peggy realizes there is an oddness to her older sister that must be hidden. While Gainsborough finds coin but little joy in his portraits of rich sitters, the girls' fretful, harried mother attempts to keep body and soul together and mold them into marriageable material. Her pretensions, based on a family secret, seem far above their supposed station. In a parallel narrative set a generation earlier, barmaid Meg has a chance meeting with the prince of Wales that will have far-reaching consequences. Howes' characters are all well-realized, a fond but preoccupied father in Thomas, a mother whose love for her daughters is underpinned by frustration and apprehension. The narrative glue is the complicated relationship between Molly and Peggy, a bond dominated by the specter of mental illness and what its discovery could do to the family's social standing and livelihood. Howes' debut is a work of absorbing biographical fiction exploring love, self-sacrifice, and codependency.