Nothing quite ticks the way it should in The Vet's Daughter, the astounding, precise novel by Barbara Comyns. You think you understand how sentences work, how people work, how morality works? You don’t, at least not in this novel, which is a startling look at a young woman who is subtly but irrevocably divorced from the world around her. This book is unforgettable in the ways in which it portrays distance and isolation.