In praise of Annabel Davis-Goff, by Sarah Davis-Goff

I grew up in a house stuffed with books, and perhaps one of the only complete collections of the works of my aunt, Annabel Davis-Goff, in Ireland. Walled Gardens, a memoir, was read widely, but her novels, The Dower House (1997), This Cold Country (2002) and The Fox’s Walk (2005) are less well-known.

The novels largely concern young women of uncertain means trying to marry desire with necessity. The novels are patient, rich and beautiful; they are exciting and reassuring in equal measure. I turn to these novels for comfort in the same way that I’d turn to Gaskell or Eliot. They feel fresh and ballsy, like the work of Edna O’Brien or William Trevor, but the style and voice are entirely her own.

All have been reviewed very strongly by the New York Times and two were listed Notable Book of the Year. The New Yorker and the Washington Post get on board to call her work “exquisite” and “brilliant”. She has been interviewed at length by NPR and Diane Sawyer, and Vanity Fair calls her “high-cheekboned, blonde and rather forbidding”. She’s so much more than that.

"There was no future. And I tell you something else that was strange about it – it defeated the men and it made the women stronger. And that's a theme that's throughout all the fiction that I try to write."
Annabel Davis-Goff on growing up in Ireland in the 50s.

Other favourites: Edna O'Brien and Charlotte Riddell

Sarah Davis-Goff is co-publisher of Tramp Press