<i>The Vet's Daughter</i> combines shocking realism with a visionary edge. The vet lives with his bedridden wife and shy daughter Alice in a sinister London suburb. He works constantly, captive to a strange private fury, and treats his family with brutality and contempt. After his wife's death, the vet takes up with a crass, needling woman who tries to refashion Alice in her own image. And yet as Alice retreats ever deeper into a dream world, she discovers an extraordinary secret power of her own.<br><br>Harrowing and haunting, like an unexpected cross between Flannery O'Connor and Stephen King, <i>The Vet's Daughter</i> is a story of outraged innocence that culminates in a scene of appalling triumph.