Guest Book Review: Jane Shemilt - daughter

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

THE NIGHT OF THE DISAPPEARANCE

She used to tell me everything.
They have a picture. It'll help.
But it doesn't show the way her hair shines so brightly it looks like sheets of gold.
She has a tiny mole, just beneath her left eyebrow.
She smells very faintly of lemons.
She bites her nails.
She never cries.
She loves autumn, I wanted to tell them. She collects leaves, like a child does. She is just a child.
FIND HER.

ONE YEAR LATER

Naomi is still missing. Jenny is a mother on the brink of obsession. The Malcolm family is in pieces.
Is finding the truth about Naomi the only way to put them back together?
Or is the truth the thing that will finally tear them apart?

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Debut Spotlight: Jane Shemilt

Today I'd like to wish my debut spotlight guest Jane Shemilt a happy publication day for her debut novel daughter which has also been selected as one of the books for the Richard and Judy Autumn book club.

While working as a GP, Jane Shemilt completed a post grad diploma in Creative Writing at Bristol University and went on to study for the M.A in Creative writing at Bath Spa, gaining both with distinction. She was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbitt award and the Lucy Cavendish fiction prize for Daughter, which is her first novel. She and her husband, a Professor of Neurosurgery, have five children and live in Bristol.

Can you tell us a little bit about your debut novel Daughter?
Daughter concerns the abduction of Naomi a teenager, and the impact this has on her family. The outcome of the subsequent search is not revealed until the very last page.

The story is told by Jenny, the mother of the missing girl. Jenny’s happy marriage, family life and successful career unravel in the months following her daughter’s disappearance.

As the trail goes cold, Jenny retreats to the family cottage in Dorset, but even as she starts a new relationship her husband reappears, with dark information that reignites the search.

The story is told in a split time frame, so the horror of the abduction alternates with the stillness of Jenny’s life a year on; events glimpsed in the present time line are also embedded in the future where their significance is revealed.

The themes concern grief, loss and survival, the secrets that families keep from each other and the lies that they tell. It’s about the shadows that lurk at the periphery of even the brightest, happiest seeming families. Daughter also looks at what can happen when doctors play God.