A House Full of Daughters

British writer Nicolson (The Great Silence: 1918–1920; Living in the Shadow of the Great War), skillfully recounts the journeys of the women in her family. She begins her chronicle in 1830 with the fascinating story of her great-great-grandmother, a famous dancer from the slums of Southern Spain, and takes readers on an intimate tour of her female relatives, explaining that for all the differences in personalities, time, and place, these individuals all share one thing: “We are all daughters.” Writing from a beach in the Hebrides, Nicolson concludes with her musings on how life will be different for her one-year old granddaughter. Nicolson had plenty of raw material from which to craft her remarkable story; many of her relatives wrote down their history. She is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson and the daughter of author Nigel Nicolson, probably the most recognizable of her family members for American readers. Even the less familiar relatives’ stories make for fascinating reading in this intimate and well-written family history. [em](June) [/em]