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Darling Girl
DG's family isn't like other families. Moving constantly, along with the stigma of her mother's mental illness, isolates the family. In public, they personify the American Dream. In private, they grow increasingly unstable. Darling Girl unfolds in a series of vignettes spanning ten years and four continents. DG's story, a journey from innocence to experience and to the realization that her mother's illness isn't the family's only problem; it isn't even the main one. Darling Girl is a tale both personal and universal, giving voice to silenced girls everywhere.
187 pages, Paperback
First published October 16, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 19, 2018
Terry Watkins’ debut novel Darling Girl is a treat for lovers of a distinctive narrative voice. Over the course of 23 chapters that would also work as stand-alone short stories, DG grows from a curious five year-old to a young woman on the brink of independence. As she recounts the poignant, puzzling, outrageous, and inadvertently hilarious stories of her peripatetic childhood, DG dispenses droll observations of family dynamics, colorful descriptions of her many relatives, and touching insights into her own emotional state. Watkins captures the genteel-but-not-gentle “Southern-ness” that is a driving force in DG’s family, no matter where in the world her father’s job takes them. The specificity of Watkins’ writing immerses readers in a particular place and bygone time, painted by the lively vocabulary of one truly darling girl.
Addendum 2021: 5 stars for the audiobook! In the author’s own voice, narrator’s voice is mesmerizing. Brava!
Addendum 2021: 5 stars for the audiobook! In the author’s own voice, narrator’s voice is mesmerizing. Brava!
January 1, 2019
The ending left you confused on what would happen next.
November 26, 2018
Though we only know her as DG, Darling Girl's protagonist shines as a young woman searching for herself amidst a family in peril. The writing is easy to follow but nuanced; a book I'll come back to again, and will definitely recommend to others!
November 23, 2018
A quick read that had me rooting for Darling Girl until I was just worn out by her abusive and manipulative father. By the end, I was just worn out by this family’s train wreck of a life.
April 1, 2019
While I enjoy an open-ended novel, this just ends abruptly. The writing was beautiful, the protagonist was likable and the situations seemed believed for the time period. Unfortunately, for me, the ending ruined it.
March 13, 2019
This is a strange book. I instantly liked the main character, DG, and I was invested in finding out what would happen to her. However the book kind of weavers around, introducing new characters, you find out her father is driving her mom crazy, he controls everything, and then the book ends. It leaves me wondering what the point of the book was.
October 16, 2018
Love, love, love it! Easily one of the best books of 2018! Pithy and brilliant. I feel blessed to have had a chance to read it. Looking forward to Terry's next novel.
My entire review:
THOUGHTS ON THIS 'N THAT
www.writeoncindy.wordpress.com
My entire review:
THOUGHTS ON THIS 'N THAT
www.writeoncindy.wordpress.com
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September 14, 2018Promoted it, loved it and found it thrillingly lyrical.
February 17, 2019
Feeling misunderstood? Put it into words. D.G., the narrator of Terry H. Watkins' novel, Darling Girl, shows us the effects of a growing up in a misguided family that covered up for a tyrannical father and a mother with an unnamed mental illness.
Today we know what emotional abandonment is. That label did not exist in the 1950s and 60s. Back then, appearances meant everything and a girl's self-esteem was measured against the standards of Seventeen Magazine. As long as you didn't look stuck in a life you hated, you weren't stuck. Minds got twisted more easily when truths went unspoken and young girls buried themselves in fiction that was more logical than real life.
In Darling Girl, beginning in 1957 and continuing through 1969, we see what happens when a mother becomes too overwhelmed to cope with a selfish and disloyal husband. The narrator, D.G., doesn't understand that her father is committing her mother to a hospital and spending his time with other women. We discover it because of the author's details and skillful phrasing. Readers understand what young D.G. cannot.
In the 1960s, a doctor finally tells D.G.'s mother there is nothing wrong with her. Today, her mother would be given an anti-depressant and sent home within 24 hours, and she'd have the will and the skills to kick her husband to the curb. She wouldn't have to ask her fifteen-year-old daughter to drive to the back entrance of the hospital so she could sneak out.
Take all of this and add world travel—Europe, South Africa, or wherever the father's job takes them—and you find a family that looks healthy but is deteriorating internally. Though D.G.'s mother's illness is real, it's also a symptom of a deeper problem: no one can tell the truth because the father doesn't allow it. In a burst of energy, D.G.'s mother figures out a strategy to give her daughter the freedom D.G. lost when her father forced her to give up an art scholarship. He rules the family with an iron fist, putting his own priorities ahead of his families. Today, that would be emotional abuse. In the 50s and 60s, it was the way things were.
You'll love the irony of the title, Darling Girl. It's no accident that the narrator is called D.G. and not given a name. She could be so many girls and women from that era. This novel may help you look at your own upbringing through new eyes or it may adjust the way you act as a parent or grandparent. The story will make you grateful that we live in times where the stigma attached to mental illness is disappearing and parents are held accountable for the way they treat their children.
by B. Lynn Goodwin
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Today we know what emotional abandonment is. That label did not exist in the 1950s and 60s. Back then, appearances meant everything and a girl's self-esteem was measured against the standards of Seventeen Magazine. As long as you didn't look stuck in a life you hated, you weren't stuck. Minds got twisted more easily when truths went unspoken and young girls buried themselves in fiction that was more logical than real life.
In Darling Girl, beginning in 1957 and continuing through 1969, we see what happens when a mother becomes too overwhelmed to cope with a selfish and disloyal husband. The narrator, D.G., doesn't understand that her father is committing her mother to a hospital and spending his time with other women. We discover it because of the author's details and skillful phrasing. Readers understand what young D.G. cannot.
In the 1960s, a doctor finally tells D.G.'s mother there is nothing wrong with her. Today, her mother would be given an anti-depressant and sent home within 24 hours, and she'd have the will and the skills to kick her husband to the curb. She wouldn't have to ask her fifteen-year-old daughter to drive to the back entrance of the hospital so she could sneak out.
Take all of this and add world travel—Europe, South Africa, or wherever the father's job takes them—and you find a family that looks healthy but is deteriorating internally. Though D.G.'s mother's illness is real, it's also a symptom of a deeper problem: no one can tell the truth because the father doesn't allow it. In a burst of energy, D.G.'s mother figures out a strategy to give her daughter the freedom D.G. lost when her father forced her to give up an art scholarship. He rules the family with an iron fist, putting his own priorities ahead of his families. Today, that would be emotional abuse. In the 50s and 60s, it was the way things were.
You'll love the irony of the title, Darling Girl. It's no accident that the narrator is called D.G. and not given a name. She could be so many girls and women from that era. This novel may help you look at your own upbringing through new eyes or it may adjust the way you act as a parent or grandparent. The story will make you grateful that we live in times where the stigma attached to mental illness is disappearing and parents are held accountable for the way they treat their children.
by B. Lynn Goodwin
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
January 7, 2019
I tend to read nonfiction and memoir above all, so the few novels I do read each year must be exceptional or I’ll quit within 30 pages. Darling Girl was one of those rare gems I could barely put down..a joy from beginning to end. It starts off in the voice of a young southern girl, 6 years old or so, sharing details about her multigenerational family in a deceptively simple coming of age tale. I started the book midway through a three hour flight, the first flight I've ever taken I wished would go on and on so I could keep reading till I was done!
Another reviewer used the word transfixed, and I totally agree. Three days passed before I could pick up Darling Girl again, and when I did I had to pause soon afterward to bask in the sublime perfection that is chapter eight. Each chapter, in fact, could stand on its own as a short story or personal essay (but seriously, if you're pressed for time, chapter 8 alone is worth the sticker price). With each new reveal—each snapshot of young DG's dysfunctional, bohemian life—we grow in understanding right along with her…all about birth, death, marriage, religion, adultery, mental illness, parenting (good and bad), bullying and manipulations of all kinds. We learn about control, empowerment, and the quest for autonomy. (Also that chickens are just not very appreciative, and mink coats aren sometimes as big as you need them to be.)
Darling Girl is the best novel I've read in years. Watkins's story unfolds bit by bit, just like life...rich with detail and colorful characters, some lovable and others dangerous. Living in DG's head as she goes through her teens I felt like I knew her, and yet till the end I couldn't predict how she’d manage all the forces working against her. It's a treat to be pulled along so completely engaged in a story and character to the very last page, with twists and turns I didn't see coming but made a beautiful, realistic, and satisfying ending.
Another reviewer used the word transfixed, and I totally agree. Three days passed before I could pick up Darling Girl again, and when I did I had to pause soon afterward to bask in the sublime perfection that is chapter eight. Each chapter, in fact, could stand on its own as a short story or personal essay (but seriously, if you're pressed for time, chapter 8 alone is worth the sticker price). With each new reveal—each snapshot of young DG's dysfunctional, bohemian life—we grow in understanding right along with her…all about birth, death, marriage, religion, adultery, mental illness, parenting (good and bad), bullying and manipulations of all kinds. We learn about control, empowerment, and the quest for autonomy. (Also that chickens are just not very appreciative, and mink coats aren sometimes as big as you need them to be.)
Darling Girl is the best novel I've read in years. Watkins's story unfolds bit by bit, just like life...rich with detail and colorful characters, some lovable and others dangerous. Living in DG's head as she goes through her teens I felt like I knew her, and yet till the end I couldn't predict how she’d manage all the forces working against her. It's a treat to be pulled along so completely engaged in a story and character to the very last page, with twists and turns I didn't see coming but made a beautiful, realistic, and satisfying ending.
May 1, 2019
Written in diary for per se or events that happened in DGs life from 5/7 years old to 18 seeing the family dynamics of mental issues and a controlling husband/father. I do feel like either another chapter or epilogue was warranted.
January 31, 2019
Enjoyed this one, but the ending wasn't quite as satisfying as I hoped. 4/5 stars.
May 15, 2019
Wait. That was how it ended?
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
December 19, 2019
Terry's writing is evocative of times past that loop you in to the point that her memories feel like your own.
September 24, 2023
Depressing but good! Felt unfinished.
June 14, 2018
KIRKUS REVIEW
In this debut novel, a child grows up under the shadow of her family’s dysfunction.
When DG’s mother, Margaret, begins to leave home for extended hiatuses, the girl is far too young—only 5 years old—to understand why. Her father, Alcide Louis Pitre, blames it on her recurrent fatigue, and her grandpa chalks it up to extreme sensitivity: “Your mama, I think she just feels too much. Feels everything too much.” When Margaret is around, she seems to float in and out of a fugue-like trance, sometimes sleeping the entire day away, leaving DG to tend to her younger siblings. One day, she greets DG with warm affection, but forgets her name, a moment heart-rendingly captured by Watkins. Alcide is a pipeliner, and as a result, the family moves often and broadly—Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Australia, South Africa—and that peripatetic rootlessness only adds to DG’s feelings of dislocation. But over time, she starts to see evidence that her mother’s chronic mental illness isn’t the family’s real disease, but rather her father’s despotism. A serial philanderer, he is also maniacally controlling, physically abusing Margaret. At a neighborhood party, he’s discovered having sex with a local’s wife, and unashamedly laughs off the indiscretion. While he’s capable of great sweetness, he can mercurially shift in an instant. Margaret finally asserts herself and demands a divorce, but she’s infinitely forgiving and terrified to be alone. Disgusted by her father, DG plots with her mother to find a way to decisively liberate herself from the clenched grip of his cunning dominion.
Watkins relates the entire story from DG’s first-person perspective, masterfully capturing her shifting voice from early childhood to her teens. Still, the novel’s principal strength is its beautifully conceived characters: DG and her mom are both infinitely loving but deeply wounded, and Alcide is incorrigibly unpredictable, by turns a tyrant and a charmer: “The best way to describe him is like a lighthouse beacon. As long as you are in the warmth of his regard, it seems the best place to be. Safe and bright and beautiful. Outside of his regard, there might be monsters—cold, dark, scary.” The author’s writing is self-assured and nuanced, and even in DG’s youth one can detect her precocious intelligence. In addition, the cumbersome weight of the girl’s premature domestic obligations in the absence of a responsible parent is shatteringly depicted. On two occasions, Margaret summons DG to drive a vehicle illegally—in the second instance, to help break her out of a rest home. (Margaret even provides elaborate instructions on how to look older.) One minor criticism: DG’s siblings are resigned to the background, a largely mute supporting cast. Giving them more life and agency could have furnished a fuller perspective on the family’s emotional fragility as well as Margaret’s neurasthenic stupor. Nevertheless, this is a powerful drama that impressively manages to both haunt and inspire.
An affecting portrayal of an emotionally abandoned girl.
In this debut novel, a child grows up under the shadow of her family’s dysfunction.
When DG’s mother, Margaret, begins to leave home for extended hiatuses, the girl is far too young—only 5 years old—to understand why. Her father, Alcide Louis Pitre, blames it on her recurrent fatigue, and her grandpa chalks it up to extreme sensitivity: “Your mama, I think she just feels too much. Feels everything too much.” When Margaret is around, she seems to float in and out of a fugue-like trance, sometimes sleeping the entire day away, leaving DG to tend to her younger siblings. One day, she greets DG with warm affection, but forgets her name, a moment heart-rendingly captured by Watkins. Alcide is a pipeliner, and as a result, the family moves often and broadly—Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Australia, South Africa—and that peripatetic rootlessness only adds to DG’s feelings of dislocation. But over time, she starts to see evidence that her mother’s chronic mental illness isn’t the family’s real disease, but rather her father’s despotism. A serial philanderer, he is also maniacally controlling, physically abusing Margaret. At a neighborhood party, he’s discovered having sex with a local’s wife, and unashamedly laughs off the indiscretion. While he’s capable of great sweetness, he can mercurially shift in an instant. Margaret finally asserts herself and demands a divorce, but she’s infinitely forgiving and terrified to be alone. Disgusted by her father, DG plots with her mother to find a way to decisively liberate herself from the clenched grip of his cunning dominion.
Watkins relates the entire story from DG’s first-person perspective, masterfully capturing her shifting voice from early childhood to her teens. Still, the novel’s principal strength is its beautifully conceived characters: DG and her mom are both infinitely loving but deeply wounded, and Alcide is incorrigibly unpredictable, by turns a tyrant and a charmer: “The best way to describe him is like a lighthouse beacon. As long as you are in the warmth of his regard, it seems the best place to be. Safe and bright and beautiful. Outside of his regard, there might be monsters—cold, dark, scary.” The author’s writing is self-assured and nuanced, and even in DG’s youth one can detect her precocious intelligence. In addition, the cumbersome weight of the girl’s premature domestic obligations in the absence of a responsible parent is shatteringly depicted. On two occasions, Margaret summons DG to drive a vehicle illegally—in the second instance, to help break her out of a rest home. (Margaret even provides elaborate instructions on how to look older.) One minor criticism: DG’s siblings are resigned to the background, a largely mute supporting cast. Giving them more life and agency could have furnished a fuller perspective on the family’s emotional fragility as well as Margaret’s neurasthenic stupor. Nevertheless, this is a powerful drama that impressively manages to both haunt and inspire.
An affecting portrayal of an emotionally abandoned girl.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews