“Celt’s writing is lyric, and she paces the novel with careful placement of slow-but-foreboding scenes and sweeping, operatic ones. . . .The final notes of The Daughters might surprise you, but in the end it’s the journey through song and myth, the cost of motherhood and the price of passion, that will resonate long after the last page.”
—Jenn Fields, Denver Post
“Lush, finely wrought. . . . Equal parts feminist fairy tale and elegy, The Daughters is a gorgeous exploration of music, family history and motherhood.”
—Carmen Maria Machado, NPR
“A voice to be reckoned with. . . . The Daughters is a lush and intelligent exploration of the stories that enrich our lives, and the sacrifices we make for the ones that we love.”
—Alex McElroy, Electric Literature
“[A] lyrical debut novel about the perplexing riddle of inheritance.”
—Sarah Meyer, O, the Oprah Magazine
“Much of The Daughters is written in a dreamy, mystical key, reminiscent of Alice Hoffman. . . . I admire the way that Celt’s novel acknowledges the radical shift of motherhood on a lusty, dark note, without agonizing about parenting choices or apologizing for the mother’s creative or sexual needs.”
—Lydia Kiesling, Guardian
“Celt’s family saga—steeped in folklore and vibrating with music—is as much about the power of storytelling as the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters. . . . A haunting novel with real emotional depth, Celt’s psychologically nuanced debut continues to resonate long after the last page has been turned.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Like the mythical rusalka themselves, The Daughters is packed with dangerous beauty; it’s an enchanting but powerful read.”
—Caroline Goldstein, Bustle
“Fans of folklore-based fiction like The Snow Child, The Great Glass Sea or Mr. Fox would enjoy Adrienne Celt’s myth-steeped first novel, which wraps Polish folktales and a family curse over four generations of women. . . . As [Lulu’s] complicated history and many secrets unfold, the reader is left to contemplate familial bonds and the ancestral stories that we share.”
—Trisha Ping, BookPage
“Filled with lyricism and imagery, this stunning debut novel . . . is sure to delight fans of magical realism.”
—Arizona Daily Star
“A story libretto that commands attention from the opening scene. Celt has crafted a modern fairy tale that had me up from my chair in standing ovation.”
—Sarah McCoy, New York Times and international best-selling author of The Mapmaker’s Children
“Dazzling. . . . Bouncing back and forth between past and present, The Daughters is a gorgeous, riveting story about family, mythology, and curses. Its dark, dizzying magic practically sings off the page.”
—Liberty Hardy, Book Riot
“Gorgeous. The Daughters is lush and dreamy and strange, and it will make you feel like a beautiful witch has put you under a sinister spell.”
—Katie Coyle, author of Vivian Apple at the End of the World
“A lush song of a book that understands the intertwined beauty and fear of motherhood and daughterhood, and the music a good story makes.”
—Caitlin Horrocks, author of This Is Not Your City
“Celt’s prose demands attention at nearly every turn. Many of her sentences register with finesse, range, and brass . . . . The Daughters is nothing if not original, risk-taking, and nearly avant-garde in its difference from more commonplace narrative forms.”
—J. T. Price, Brooklyn Rail
“Celt’s debut is a carefully crafted and mesmerizing look at one family’s history. . . . A beautifully written exploration of the myths and the realities that bind families together that will leave readers eagerly awaiting Celt’s next novel.”
—Booklist
“Brimming with sad, delicious folklore and echoing with the voices of five generations of mothers and daughters in a family shaped by music as much as by tragedy, Celt’s debut is enchanting.”
—Sarah Cornwell, author of What I Had Before I Had You
“The novel’s luminous prose, subtle structure, and rich contrast between present-day Chicago and Old World folklore help craft a resonant meditation on the way our stories at once shape and sabotage our lives.”
—Publishers Weekly
“There is so much to applaud in The Daughters—its love song to the world of opera, its masterful retelling of ancient Polish fables, and, above all, its examination of the complexity of modern love, in all its varieties.”
—Julia Fierro, author of Cutting Teeth
The Daughters is a novel. All of the characters are products of the author’s imagination, and all of the settings, locales, and events have been invented by the author or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Adrienne Celt
All rights reserved
First published as a Liveright paperback 2016
Vasko Popa, “Last News About the Little Box,” translated by Charles Simic, from Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1987 by Oberlin College. Reprinted with the permission of Oberlin College Press.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at [email protected] or 800-233-4830
Book design by Abbate Design Production manager: Anna Oler
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Celt, Adrienne.
The daughters : a novel / Adrienne Celt.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-63149-045-3 (hardcover)
1. Sopranos—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.E465D48 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015005829
ISBN 978-1-63149-046-0 (e-book)
ISBN 978-1-63149-194-8 (pbk.)
Liveright Publishing Corporation
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W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
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