SOURCE: Kaveney, Roz. “Moments of Choice.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4668 (18 September 1992): 23.

In the following review, Kaveney comments that the strength of Daughters of the House lies in the ambivalence of the characters, as well as Roberts's descriptions of deep sadness, sense of loss, and anguished memory.

Daughters of the House is an English novel about French Catholic provincial life; an overt but restrained feminism informs it and creates a sense of deep sadness. Cousins Thérèse and Léonie, born during the Occupation in a small Norman village, support each other through puberty and the death of Thérèse's mother, but are separated by Thérèse's vocation and by Léonie's marriage. Twenty years later, Thérèse returns, having decided to leave the convent, and finds their relationship has curdled.

Pervading both the extended picture of their adolescence in the 1950s, and the framing...