by Ann Claycomb
She sat back down. The child surged like a swimmer within her. Fand set her hands over the taut skin of her belly and shut her eyes. After a few moments, she gave voice to a sustained crooning sound. It was wordless, of course, but then the music of her people often was. It was not even a song as Fand had come to understand songs, but it was rhythmic and melodic. It sounded strange in the air, enough so that she wondered if she was remembering it right. It had been sung to her when she was a fretful little girl. Later she had sung it to her grandmother when the old woman was afraid to sleep. Your voice is a gift, her grandmother had told her. When you sing me to sleep my dreams are always beautiful.
The child, suspended in her own small sea, quieted against her mother’s hands. Fand sang on, sang her daughter to sleep, and to dream her own beautiful dreams.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I sent this manuscript out into the world, and not long after received an email: “The first five pages are lovely. May I see more?” So thank you to Cameron McClure for liking how this began and for seeing it through to the end. To Rebecca Lucash, who loved that the story was dark; to Elle Keck, who picked me up midstream and didn’t let me drown; and to absolutely everyone at William Morrow, who made this book better—thank you.
I love fairy tales and fantasy because of Hans Christian Andersen (even though I think he got this one wrong), Andrew Lang, Angela Carter, Emma Bull, Robin McKinley, and so many others. Without Guy Gavriel Kay’s daring to make the impossible happen, for example, this book would never have ended the way it did.
When I realized that Kathleen and Harry were singers and Robin a composer, I set out to understand opera. Thank God I came to love it. And thanks also to Greg Carpenter and to the world he opened up to me, to Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson for their exquisite singing, and to Fred Plotkin for writing Opera 101, without which I would not have risked writing a word about opera in performance.
Great writers/teachers along the way have taught me how to write better: cleaner, stronger, truer. From Claire Messud and Reg McKnight to Gail Galloway Adams, Kevin Oderman (I took out all the unnecessary words, I promise!), and Mark Brazaitis (even though he hates italicized sections), I have been unbelievably fortunate and grateful to have worked with all of you. And to Emily Mitchell, who was sort of stuck with me from the beginning (!) and who gave me hope that this book had a shot when I told her how it was going to end and she said not, “Are you crazy?” but “Oh, thank goodness”: thank you, thank you.
Finally, there are those who were part of this project because they are my favorite people in the world. Thanks to Paula, who found a way to keep asking how the writing was going even though she was afraid to “poke the bear at the zoo,” and to Paul, who doesn’t like to be put on the spot but sucked it up and offered brilliant feedback because it’s in the sibling contract somewhere. Thanks to Collin, for being at least somewhat proud of me, to Ian, who would like to remind me that Daddy also wrote a book, and to Lilah, for keeping me humble. Thanks from the bottom of my heart to Erin, who listened and read and poured more wine and read some more and then asked when she could read some more; thank you for reminding me always that my reader is out there and she is you. And thanks to Ryan, who should know all the reasons why but probably doesn’t because I’m too busy writing fairy tales. Thank you for refusing to let this book be anything less than the best it could possibly be, for figuring out that tequila is a good incentive for writing the hard parts, and for believing in me, which is its own kind of strange and wonderful magic.
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Meet Ann Claycomb
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Reading Group Guide
About the author
Meet Ann Claycomb
AN INVETERATE READER OF FAIRY TALES, ANN CLAYCOMB believes in the power of faerie, chocolate, and a good workout, in no particular order. She earned her MA in English literature from the University of Maryland, where she baffled her thesis committee with an argument that “Beauty and the Beast” is ruined by the Beast’s transformation into just an ordinary prince at the end. She earned her MFA in fiction from West Virginia University, while writing the novel that became The Mermaid’s Daughter. This took, as her daughter is fond of telling people, “a long time—like, a really long time.” Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her realist short fiction, Ann is nonetheless drawn to retelling fairy tales to highlight the thorns around the beautiful castles and the dangers of things that seem too good to be true (they usually are). She lives with her husband, three children, and two cats in Morgantown, West Virginia, where she is at work on her next novel.
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About the book
Reading Group Guide
1.This novel plays with two versions of “The Little Mermaid”—both the original by Hans Christian Andersen and the Disney film version. How did your own familiarity with either or both of these versions affect your reading of the novel? Were you surprised by the twists in the story?
2.From the very first chapter, Kathleen describes herself as a bit of a “diva” and a “drama queen” and the other characters agree with this self-assessment. What was your initial response to her as a character? How did your feelings about her change as the story unfolded?
3.This story is told by four different characters: Kathleen, Harry, and the sea witches tell the story from their own perspectives, while Robin’s story is told in the third person. Did you find this an effective way to tell the story? Was there a voice you liked better than the others, or one that you liked less? Why?
4.The sea witches claim throughout the novel that they’ve been wrongly portrayed, specifically in Andersen’s version, as evil and malicious. They also say they are as trapped by the curse as Fand and her descendants are. What do you think of their arguments? Are they evil or just misunderstood? In what ways are they also trapped?
5.Throughout the book, all of the characters, especially Kathleen and her friend Tom, rely on dark humor as a coping strategy, something that many of us do. Why do you think people turn to this kind of humor in very serious situations? How do you think it helped Kathleen and Tom cope with the circumstances of the novel?
6.Harry and Kathleen’s relationship could be seen as full of inequalities: Harry believes that Kathleen is a better singer, more beautiful, and also in need of caretaking, while Kathleen often relies on Harry to be the more practical, grown-up partner. Did their relationship make sense to you? Did you feel that Harry was indeed Kathleen’s “true love”?
7.We learn the long history of Kathleen’s ancestors well before she and Harry are able to piece it together in Ireland. Did you find the other women’s stories compelling? How did their stories affect your outlook on Kathleen’s story?
8.Magic enters the “real world” in the novel in Ireland, first with the appearance of the Selkie and then in the sea witches’ cave. How did the intrusion of the magical world change your expectations for the rest of the novel? Why do you think it first occurred in Ireland? Do you believe places can have special properties?
9.Were you surprised by Tae’s acceptance of the story that Harry and Kathleen tell when they return from Ireland? What about Tom’s? How does the novel set up the element of fantasy to make it plausible enough for other characters to accept? What about for the reader?
10.Robin and Harry become convinced that writing an opera for Kathleen will somehow help her, but they’re never quite sure how. What did you think the outcome of the opera would be? Did you ever think, like Kathleen, that they were being selfish and merely pursuing the creative process because they love it?
11.When did you realize what Kathleen’s fate would be? Were you surprised? Would you call this a happy ending and do you believe it’s the right one?
12.One of the central questions of the book is “Can the transformative power of music overcome a
magic that has prevailed for generations?” Do you believe art can have its own kind of magic? Have you experienced that in your own life? How?
13.The bonus short story, “The Mermaid at the Opera,” features a relationship between an artist and a muse that is very different from the one between Robin and Harry and their muse, Kathleen. How would you describe the two different relationships? What do you think the relationship should be like between artist and muse?
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CREDITS
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Front cover photograph by Zena Holloway
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE MERMAID’S DAUGHTER. Copyright © 2017 by Ann Claycomb. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-256068-1
EPub Edition March 2017 ISBN 9780062560698
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