Daphne

‘A woman just couldn’t relinquish her control’- Daphne

Will Boast’s debut novel, ‘Daphne’ offered me nothing new nor intriguing as a reader despite its enticing concept and stimulus.

I chose to read the book based on its tagline; ‘Emotion suffuses everything we do, think, and are. Who would guess it could quite literally paralyse you.’, as I believe as humans we all do both consciously and unconsciously, use our emotions to control our lives and decisions but the idea, and unfortunately some people’s reality that it can paralyse you  and I wanted to better understand this reality.

I first started reading the book at the beginning of October but after the first four chapters I had determined that I had no interest in Daphne’s trials and tribulations with her neurological condition, job and personal life, so was deciding upon returning it the book to the library, but after consulting several favourable reviews on Goodreads I gave it another chance, read it all, and sadly my opinion of the book is unchanged.

Boast’s protagonist, Daphne, came across as very unlikable from the start, being needlessly rude to others. Though this could have been her façade to protect herself from the effects of her condition, her actions always seemed unnecessarily cold.

There were times, most notably in chapters thirteen and fourteen that it most evident that she was trying to protect herself from her emotions and the consequence of giving into them. I felt that like I did start to sympathise with her then because it was clear she had to go to great lengths to be robotic and emotionless throughout her week. Also, it showed her to be in control and refusing to be defeated by her conditions, behaviour which I was in favour of, so I gradually started supporting her.

Unfortunately, my empathy didn’t last for much longer than those chapters as she did continue to be heartless, without reason, to those who were continuously trying to her help. This caused me to wonder if Boast really wanted the reader to empathise with his protagonist. Although, he does provide nuggets of information that give Daphne more of a backstory and to some extent justification for her actions, it still wasn’t enough for me.

In the front cover of the novel it says that Boast was inspired by the mythical tale of Daphne and Apollo but with no knowledge of the tale when reading it I had no expectations in relation to it; however, after reading the Greek myth, I don’t feel Boast really used his stimulus to its full potential as I didn’t think the relationship aspect of Daphne’s life was the most important; on the other hand he does have creative license to base his novel on as little or as much of the Greek myth as he wanted, but it just used enough for me to really view it as a successful interpretation of the myth.

 It seemed to me that in the last fifty pages of the novel Boast really did start to get in his stride with his writing as he tied up loose ends and got me to start engage with Daphne a bit more especially when Daphne powerfully states ‘Show me how you make her happy’, giving me a glimmer of Boasts writing that enabled him to receive the Rome Prize in 2017, but for me this wasn’t enough to save the novel and I ultimately felt no emotion in regards to Daphne despite her turbulent life.