The Painter's Daughters

The titular painter in this historical fiction novel is Thomas Gainsborough...if you think you don't know his work, you've probably seen Blue Boy. He also painted his daughters, Molly and Peggy, and they are, of course, the focus here. Peggy is the younger, by a year, but even as a young girl she feels a sense of obligation to her sister, who has episodes where she seems to forget who and where she is. Peggy is terrified her beloved Molly will end up in a madhouse and devises a system to keep Molly's condition hidden. This becomes more challenging when the family moves to Bath and the girls become teenagers. After a betrayal when they're in their 20s, Polly finds herself questioning everything she's done and struggling to figure out how to proceed. We also get some peeks into the life of Meg, a different girl living in a different time, whose story does eventually intersect with the main plot line but not until quite late in the proceedings. I found myself drawn into this book quickly, the voice Emily Howes creates for Polly is incredibly compelling. The love and fear she has for her sister, the anxiety she feels about keeping anyone from understanding the depths of Molly's issues, the way she sublimates that anxiety into feeling like she has to be good are all convincingly rendered. Polly feels like a girl, then an adolescent, then a woman. Since I'm a character reader, this went a long way towards making the book work as well as it did. The biggest issue for me was the Meg storyline. I understand why she included it, but I resented every time it pulled me out of the main narrative in which I'd otherwise been engaged. This is a very promising debut and I'm excited to read more from Howes!