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WORK TITLE: The Mermaid’s Daughter
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://annclaycomb.blogspot.com/
CITY: Morgantown
STATE: WV
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://provost.wvu.edu/profiles/ann-claycomb * http://happyeverafter.usatoday.com/2017/03/13/ann-claycomb-interview-the-mermaid-daughter/ * https://www.harpercollins.com/cr-124240/ann-claycomb
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017037845
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017037845
HEADING: Claycomb, Ann
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374 __ |a Authors |2 lcsh
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377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Her The mermaid’s daughter, ©2017: |b t.p. (Ann Claycomb) back cover (has MFA in fiction from West Virginia University, this is her first novel)
PERSONAL
Married; children: three.
EDUCATION:Wellesley College, B.A.; University of Maryland, M.A.; West Virginia University, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author and administrator. West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 2011–, began as executive assistant to provost, became director of academic communication, currently assistant vice president for strategic and academic communication.
AWARDS:Received Pushcart Prize nominations for short fiction.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short fiction to periodicals, including American Short Fiction, Brevity, Evansville Review, Fiction Weekly, Hot Metal Bridge, Title Goes Here, and Zahir.
SIDELIGHTS
Author Ann Claycomb serves as the prevost’s assistant vice president for strategic and academic communication at her alma mater, West Virginia University. Her first novel is The Mermaid’s Daughter.
Claycomb’s novel is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s story The Little Mermaid, but it does not seek to tell the same story over again. Instead, it looks at the consequences for the mermaid’s children several generations later. “Since childhood, Kathleen has been plagued by bizarre maladies,” according to a summary of the novel accompanying Joyce Lamb’s interview with the author in Happy Ever After, “from stabbing pains in her feet to the terrifying sensation of her tongue being cut out. Teams of doctors have been unable to diagnosis her, and only the touch of seawater temporarily eases her pain. Studying opera at a top conservatory, Kathleen shows tremendous promise as a soprano, but her phantom pains and obsession with the sea grow more debilitating every day.” Kathleen and her friend and lover Harriet are vacationing in Florida when the call of the sea becomes more than Kathleen can resist. Eventually Kathleen’s father decides that a trip to Ireland, her ancestral home, might help her relinquish her pain. “Sometimes we feel Kathleen’s own pain and panic,” stated Allison Chopin in the New York Daily News; at other moments we see how much her loved ones wish they could help her, and how helpless they feel.” “Haunting and lyrical,” wrote a reviewer for the Paperback Pilgrim website, “The Mermaid’s Daughter asks—how far we will go for those we love? And can the transformative power of music overcome a magic that has prevailed for generations?”
Critics enjoyed Claycomb’s debut novel. “This inventive story,” asserted a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “captures the mystery, tragic loss, and beauty of Hans Christian Andersen’s original mermaid tale while thoughtfully and passionately updating it.” “The novel is a loose retelling of … The Little Mermaid,” said Michael Cart in Booklist. “And, like its source, it is numinous and lovely.” “A compelling story,” declared a California Bookwatch reviewer, “The Mermaid’s Daughter is hard to put down.” “Overall,” concluded Amanda Baldeneaux and Danyelle C. Overbo in Fiction Unbound, “The Mermaid’s Daughter was a great addition to the mythology of The Little Mermaid, delving into avenues not typically explored with these characters and breathing beautiful life into the narrative via operatic language and framework. Anyone who loves mermaids as much as we do or any reader who likes their fantasy grounded with a little reality will enjoy the read.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2017, Michael Cart, review of The Mermaid’s Daughter, p. 36.
California Bookwatch, May 1, 2017, review of The Mermaid’s Daughter.
New York Daily News, April 1, 2017, Allison Chopin, review of The Mermaid’s Daughter.
Publishers Weekly, January 30, 2017, review of The Mermaid’s Daughter, p. 172.
ONLINE
Ann Claycomb Website, http://annclaycomb.blogspot.com (November 1, 2017), author profile.
Fiction Unbound, https://www.fictionunbound.com/ (April 28, 2017), Amanda Baldeneaux and Danyelle C. Overbo, “Legacies of Loss in Ann Claycomb’s The Mermaid’s Daughter.“
Happy Ever After, http://happyeverafter.usatoday.com/ (March 13, 2017), Joyce Lamb, author interview; review of The Mermaid’s Daughter.
HarperCollins Website, https://www.harpercollins.com/ (November 1, 2017), author profile.
Paperback Pilgrim, https://thepaperbackpilgrim.com/ (March 14, 2017), review of The Mermaid’s Daughter.
West Virginia University, http://provost.wvu.edu/ (November 1, 2017), author profile.
About the Author
Ann Claycomb is the author of The Mermaid's Daughter, a novel from William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers. Ann is a writer living in Morgantown, West Virginia, where she earned her MFA in fiction from West Virginia University, and an MA in literature from University of Maryland. She has studied with Emily Mitchell, Gail Galloway Adams, Mark Brazaitis, Kevin Oderman, Claire Messud, Joyce Kornblatt, Howard Norman, and Reginald McKnight. She has published fiction and creative non-fiction in several venues.
Ann Claycomb
Assistant Vice President for Strategic and Academic Communication
Photo of Ann Claycomb
ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR STRATEGIC AND ACADEMIC COMMUNICATION
304-293-9919
ann.claycomb@mail.wvu.edu
Ann Claycomb is Assistant Vice President for Strategic and Academic Communication in the Office of the Provost.
She works on a variety of initiatives for the Provost’s Office, most notably in support of faculty recognition both internally and externally and in communicating the strategic initiatives of the Provost’s office to the campus and wider university community. She has been with the Provost’s Office at WVU since 2011, first as Executive Assistant to the Provost and then as Director of Academic Communication.
Ms. Claycomb earned her BA in English literature and psychology from Wellesley College, her MA in English literature from the University of Maryland, and her MFA in fiction writing from WVU.
Interview: Ann Claycomb, author of ‘The Mermaid’s Daughter’
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By: Joyce Lamb | March 13, 2017 12:01 am
Ann Claycomb
Joyce: Welcome to HEA, Ann! Please tell us a bit about your new release, The Mermaid’s Daughter.
Ann: The Mermaid’s Daughter isn’t a retelling of The Little Mermaid so much as a reimagining, beginning with “What if …?” What if the mermaid who fell in love with a prince so many years ago didn’t get her happy ending (like she does in the Disney film) or give him up selflessly and turn into seafoam (as she does in the original story)? What if she just loses this faithless man and has to live out her life on land … and what if her pain lives on in her daughter and her daughter’s daughter? And because I was interested in staying (mostly) grounded in reality, this also becomes a story of finding ways to make magic out of the tools we all have at our disposal: love and faith and art.
Joyce: What inspires your book ideas?
Ann: I’m obsessed with fairy tales, but I’m less interested in just retelling a story than in juxtaposing fairy tales and magic with the “real” world and seeing what happens.
Joyce: Is there anything interesting that’s happened to you while doing research for a book?
Ann: When I went to Ireland to research The Mermaid’s Daughter, I knew I’d need to get out on the water and find a way to write about it that conveyed the intense emotion that my main character, Kathleen, has in response to it. I took the ferry out to Inish Mór, an island off the coast, and on the way back to the mainland we got caught in a terrible storm. I was so seasick I had to huddle on the deck in this driving rain, but even while I was shivering and trying not to throw up there was a part of me that knew this was exactly the experience I needed to have.
Joyce: Would you like to share a favorite moment from your writing career?
Ann: When my 7-year-old saw the poster for my book in our local Barnes & Noble, he did this hilariously theatrical double-take and then started jumping up and down and asking why everyone in the store wasn’t rushing over to meet me because I was FAMOUS. The people standing near enough to hear him were in stitches.
Joyce: What’s your favorite snack and/or beverage while you’re writing?
Ann: I’ve gotten over a lot of tricky sections by thinking past the block while making a pan of brownies, writing frantically while they bake, and then eating straight out of the pan. With a fork.
Joyce: LOL! What are three romance novels on your to-be-read list?
Ann: Elinor Lipman’s On Turpentine Lane because her stories are brilliant, funny and flawlessly plotted; Mary Balogh’s Someone to Love and the sequels, because Mary Balogh does Regency like nobody’s business; Stella Newman’s Seven Steps to Happiness, because I absolutely loved her previous books and just haven’t gotten to this one yet.
Joyce: What would be your dream vacation?
Ann: Two weeks at a beautiful beach house in Key West with a housecleaner and a private chef … and Mary Poppins on retainer for the second week to whisk the children away so my husband and I could, for example, sleep past seven.
Joyce: What’s coming next?
Ann: Umm … a novel about Rumpelstiltskin, peacocks and the plague.
Joyce: Thanks, Ann!
About The Mermaid’s Daughter:
Since childhood, Kathleen has been plagued by bizarre maladies, from stabbing pains in her feet to the terrifying sensation of her tongue being cut out. Teams of doctors have been unable to diagnosis her, and only the touch of seawater temporarily eases her pain.
Studying opera at a top conservatory, Kathleen shows tremendous promise as a soprano, but her phantom pains and obsession with the sea grow more debilitating every day. Her girlfriend Harry, a talented singer in her own right, worries Kathleen will suffer the same fate as her mother and grandmother. When Kathleen has yet another dangerous breakdown, Harry convinces her to return to her Irish birthplace to try and make sense of a legacy of tragedy.
But in Ireland, they soon discover Kathleen’s family history is far older and darker than either could have imagined. Kathleen’s fate seems sealed, and the only way out is to make the worst choice of all—ending her lover’s life or her own.
About Ann
An inveterate reader of fairy tales, Ann Claycomb believes in the power of faerie, chocolate, and a good workout, in no particular order. Writing the novel that became The Mermaid’s Daughter, took—as her daughter is fond of telling people—“a long time. Like, a really long time.” Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her realist short fiction, Ann is nonetheless drawn to retelling fairy tales to highlight the thorns around the beautiful castles and the dangers of things that seem too good to be true (they usually are). She lives with her husband, three children, and two cats in Morgantown, West Virginia, where she is at work on her next novel.
Connect with Ann on Facebook.
Fairy tale retellings, Author interviews
Ann Claycomb
Ann Claycomb
Brian Persinger
Biography
Ann Claycomb’s fiction has been published in American Short Fiction, Zahir, Fiction Weekly, Brevity, Hot Metal Bridge, The Evansville Review, Title Goes Here, and other publications. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has an MFA in fiction from West Virginia University.
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Print Marked Items
The Mermaid's Daughter
Ann Claycomb
California Bookwatch.
(May 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
The Mermaid's Daughter is about a mother's suicide, a struggling father/daughter relationship, and a young woman who
at the age of 25 has come to live with her angst over the past, until a relationship with a fellow opera student opens her
eyes to what is really causing her pain - the absence of a relationship with the sea. A trip to Kathleen's ancestral
homeland Ireland brings new challenges and changes to the coup as Kathleen discovers her real heritage, her father
Robin is determined to save his daughter, and Harry discovers that his offer to help may have masked a death blow to
more than one possibility. A compelling story, The Mermaid's Daughter is hard to put down and especially
recommended for novel readers who enjoy stores of complicated relationships and life-changing events.
Ann Claycomb
William Morrow & Company
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
195 Broadway New York, New York 10007
9780062560681, $15.95, www.harpercollins.com
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Claycomb, Ann. "The Mermaid's Daughter." California Bookwatch, 1 May 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA496014823&it=r&asid=5cc9de92b1da5b2489f7cd546853f853.
Accessed 4 Oct. 2017.
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The Mermaid's Daughter
Publishers Weekly.
264.5 (Jan. 30, 2017): p172.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Mermaid's Daughter
Ann Claycomb. Morrow, $15.99 trade paper
(448p) ISBN 978-0-06-256068-1
The tale of the Little Mermaid may be well-known, but don't look for the Disneyfied version in Claycomb's fine debut.
Here, the story swirls around Kathleen Conarn, a young student learning opera at conservatory. She's not just any music
student, but an amazing soprano from a family of musical talents (her Irish-born father, Robin, is a famous composer).
Kathleen has always experienced extreme pain piercing the bottom of her feet and, strangely, the only thing that
temporarily soothes her is seawater. She feels a strong connection to the sea, though her mother drowned herself in
Ireland when Kathleen was just a baby. When it turns out that the women in Kathleen's family have had a history of
suicidal acts near the sea for more than a few generations, the situation begins to smell fishy, and Kathleen's girlfriend,
Harry (short for Harriet), wants to take her to Ireland to see if they can uncover some truth about Kathleen's family
history and her suffering. Claycomb structures the book into three acts, like an opera, and deftly switches between
Kathleen's and Harry's voices--punctuated by Robin's "Composer Notes"--to create the effect of singers baring their
souls. Written with attention to musicality and the murmuring backdrop of the incessant ocean, this inventive story
captures the mystery, tragic loss, and beauty of Hans Christian Andersen's original mermaid tale while thoughtfully and
passionately updating it. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Mermaid's Daughter." Publishers Weekly, 30 Jan. 2017, p. 172+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480195147&it=r&asid=84d6562682b14280766cba468e74cb45.
Accessed 4 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480195147
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The Mermaid's Daughter
Michael Cart
Booklist.
113.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2017): p36.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Mermaid's Daughter. By Ann Claycomb. Mar. 2017.448p. Morrow, paper, $15.99 (9780062560681).
Self-styled drama queen, Kathleen's phantom pain in her feet and mouth is anything but artifice; it is the same kind of
inexplicable, excruciating pain that drove her mother to suicide. The only thing that affords Kathleen relief is immersion
in water, preferably the sea, though it is the sea that generations of women in her Irish family, which seems to be cursed,
have chosen as their means of suicide. Now, on a vacation trip to Florida with her girlfriend, Harry she begins hearing
mysterious voices from the sea calling, "Come home. Come home." Angrily denying their summons, she returns home
with Harry to Boston, where Kathleen suffers a debilitating attack that leaves her hospitalized. Harry and Kathleen's
father agree that an end to her pain might be found if she is taken to Ireland. But will it? Claycomb's fine first novel is
told from multiple points of view, even that of mermaids, for, yes, the novel is a loose retelling of Hans Christian
Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid. And, like its source, it is numinous and lovely.--Michael Cart
YA: Teens will enjoy the drama of this imaginative retelling of the classic Andersen tale. MC.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cart, Michael. "The Mermaid's Daughter." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 36+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479077951&it=r&asid=251ee904f748a88bbedc01713afd9426.
Accessed 4 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479077951
‘The Mermaid’s Daughter’ brings darkness and new life to an old fairy tale: book review
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“The Mermaid’s Daughter," by Ann Claycomb, is available now.
“The Mermaid’s Daughter," by Ann Claycomb, is available now.
BY ALLISON CHOPIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, April 1, 2017, 9:00 AM
TITLE
THE MERMAID'S DAUGHTER
AUTHOR:
Ann Claycomb
PUBLISHER:
Harper Collins
The story of the Little Mermaid gets a dark and grown-up makeover in “The Mermaid’s Daughter.”
Kathleen, a talented soprano studying opera, has suffered from troubling ailments her entire life; needle-like pain in her feet, burning in her mouth and bouts of depression. Her mother suffered similar symptoms and ultimately drowned when Kathleen was just a baby.
Doctors are baffled by Kathleen’s strange symptoms, and the only thing that helps soothe her pain is water, especially from the sea.
Her girlfriend Harry, also an opera singer, and her composer father both fear she’ll end up like her mother, and the quest to find answers takes Kathleen and Harry to her birthplace in Ireland.
‘We Are Okay’ is elegant portrait of grief and healing: review
From the title of Ann Claycomb’s novel, and the mythology that’s gradually revealed to us, we learn pieces of the truth of Kathleen’s plague before she does. Like several generations of women before her, she’s destined to either murder her lover or take her own life at a young age.
“The Mermaid’s Daughter” is a beautifully written and captivating read.
Claycomb’s use of the fairy tale is deft and enchanting. Drawing on Hans Christian Andersen’s original story, she also adds a unique Irish twist. Her incorporation of opera is also impressive, as she manages to make scenes from the stage come alive beautifully on the page.
StantonDaily
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She also cleverly switches perspectives throughout the story, from Kathleen to Harry to Kathleen’s father — and, occasionally, to the mysterious sea witches who were responsible for this curse.
‘The Dark Days Pact’ brings tension and terror to 1812 Brighton
Sometimes we feel Kathleen’s own pain and panic; at other moments we see how much her loved ones wish they could help her, and how helpless they feel.
Those familiar with Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” know that it’s much darker than the Disney version, and Claycomb stays true to that mode for much of the book. “The Mermaid’s Daughter” is quite bleak and serious at times, as Kathleen’s fate seems desperate and hopeless.
At other times, it seems like it’s going to be too pat. But this book ends up being a satisfying emotional journey, one that’s heart-wrenching and also a little magical.
“The Mermaid’s Daughter” is out now from William Morrow Paperbacks.
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