Alice's frail mother dies and is swiftly replaced in the family home by her father's brash and sexually savvy new girlfriend.

The confusion and abuse heaped on Alice combined with her ultimate optimism lead to her discovering her own occult powers, with disastrous results.

The quality of the writing and of that "innocent eye which observes with childlike simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrence" was praised by Graham Greene.

[1] Barbara Comyns dreamt the idea for The Vet's Daughter whilst on honeymoon in a Welsh cottage lent to her and her new husband by the Soviet agent Kim Philby in 1945.

In 2019, the book was featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme A Good Read, where it was described as "suburban gothic meets magical realism".