Melanie Joosten’s incredible launch speech:
I’m very pleased to be here tonight to launch the novel Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra. It’s so exciting to think of how many of you will be going home with this book tonight and reading until the early hours – just a word of warning you might want to call in sick tomorrow, just to be sure you have time to finish reading it…and to recover from the experience.
Only Daughter is true psychological thriller. It is not just a little bit scary, or a little bit creepy – it’s an exploration into the psychology of young women; it’s a murder mystery; and on top of that, it’s completely riveting. There are many novels written about women who disappear, and the detectives who try and hunt down the person responsible. But there are not many novels written about women who turn up, long after disappearing – or without disappearing at all. This novel plays with the stereotypes of crime fiction by giving a voice to both the young woman Rebecca who disappears, and the woman who willingly takes her place.
What I loved about this book is how real both women were. Sixteen-year-old Rebecca Winter, working her summer job at McDonalds as the bushfires rage through the outskirts of Canberra, is not a victim. She is a fully realised character and Anna manages to capture that mix of naivety and maturity peculiar to teenage girls. She has a brash confidence that takes her on shop lifting trips with her best friend Liz, and flirting with her cute co-worker Luke. This is coupled with the slightly insecure prickliness that comes from an increasingly stressful home life with her parents and younger brothers. We are drawn into her world as it is very real and relatable, yet at the same time we know something is not right. The horror creeps in, with just a little incident here and there, and as readers we become desperate to know what happened to Rebecca and who is responsible.
This in itself would have been enough of a story, and many authors might have concentrated just on that. But Anna has added another layer of mystery, 11 years later. A young woman originally from Perth gets caught shoplifting food and claims to be Bec Winter, found again after 11 years. This Bec is hungry, homeless and not particularly nice. We know from the outset that she is an imposter, yet we don’t know what motivates her or how far she will go. She has no qualms about what she is doing, and considers everything and everyone fair game.
What’s intriguing is that this Bec is not quite as likable as the real Rebecca, but she is just as real, and as a reader you can’t help but caring about her. Her story and attitude also makes you question who she is and where she’s come from … and what it is she has left behind. This is where the real ‘psychological’ elements of the genre come in, as the reader tries to understand the motives for the Imposter Bec’s lies and deceit, while at the same time the Imposter Bec is having second thoughts and realising that it’s not all a harmless game. Someone is going to get hurt and she is slowly realising that it’s more and more likely to be her. The lengths Bec goes to to avoid being found out are impressive, disturbing and make for uneasy reading. At the same time as we’re thinking the woman impersonating Bec is doing an unkind thing, we’re hoping like hell she won’t get found out – because who will find out what happened to the real Bec Winter then?
Anna is masterful in the way she has constructed this duel narrative, drip feeding information to the reader so that we feel like we’re inching closer to the truth, but without a hope in hell of guessing what it is. Only Daughter is everything a psychological thriller should be and more. It’s safe to say you won’t see the end coming, and while you might be reading with one eye closed to block out the horror, you won’t be putting this book down until you get to the end … and I am sure you will then be very disappointed it doesn’t continue for another 200 pages. My only advice is to read it as quickly as possible because otherwise you will find yourself sitting there at work worrying about the two very real women at the centre of this riveting story, and trying to piece the intricate plot together in your mind.
One of the most admirable things about this book is how spot on and natural the writing is, particularly the dialogue, which is a very difficult thing to do. In Only Daughter, Anna has done what every writer of a psychological thriller attempts to do – created an enthralling story, full of clever twists, a huge helping of tension, a little bit of gruesomeness and a satisfying conclusion. Plus she’s done what every writer of every literary novel attempts, and so many fail, which is to create memorable characters who seem like real people and not just figments of the author’s overactive imagination and in service to the plot.
I cannot commend it highly enough and so it is my great pleasure to announce Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra officially launched.
Leave a Reply