58 pages • 1-hour read
Like Mother, Like Daughter
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Background
Geographical Context: New York City
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Like Mother, Like Daughter is set in New York City. The various New York neighborhoods are used both as a shorthand to describe the characters and to highlight their distance from one another, particularly in the case of Katrina and Cleo McHugh. Katrina lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Once known for being a hipster neighborhood, Park Slope has transformed in recent years into a neighborhood for liberal, upper-middle-class to wealthy professionals. Katrina is the epitome of this demographic; her clothes, which are expensive but understated, reflect this cultural imprint, most notably her gray canvas Chloé flats that do not draw attention to themselves but retail for around $700. Cleo describes her as “‘working Park Slope mom’ through and through” (175), and to those familiar with the neighborhood, this reference develops Katrina’s character.
Cleo attends New York University in Manhattan. Her dorm is located on Washington Square Park. Katrina sits in this park to surveille her daughter. Although they live in different areas of the city, Cleo is still easily accessible with a short subway ride. This illustrates that Cleo does not live that far away and explains how Katrina is easily able to spend so much time staking out Cleo’s dorm. In addition, Cleo’s decision not to see her mother for months despite their proximity highlights their emotional distance.
Another location that appears briefly in the novel is the legendary Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side, where start-up CEO Vivienne Voxhall lives. Cleo accurately describes the Upper West Side as “more down-to-earth than Upper East [Side], but not Brooklyn earthy […] [She’s] rich, but also [she’s] a good Democrat” (175). The Dakota is a beautiful Renaissance Revival building on the west side of Central Park that has been home to many celebrities over its 140-year history, including John Lennon (who was murdered there in 1980), Judy Garland, and John Madden. That Vivienne Voxhall lives there is a sign both of her wealth and her aspirations for fame and even greater fortune.
Genre Context: Domestic Thrillers
Like Mother, Like Daughter is a domestic psychological mystery thriller. The term “domestic” in this genre refers to the close focus on family dynamics—in this case, the mother-daughter relationship and the tensions between husband and wife. Much of the action takes place within the family home in Park Slope. Further, much of the narrative focuses on the protagonist Katrina’s feelings of doubt and anxiety around motherhood and her treatment of Cleo. The term “psychological” here refers to the novel’s focus on the characters’ interior thoughts and feelings. As is typical of the genre, these are communicated through the use of first-person perspective. For instance, as the daughter, Cleo, approaches her family home in Brooklyn, she feels “consumed by dread” (1). The first-person point of view offers direct insight into the changing psychological states of the protagonists throughout the narrative.
Like Mother, Like Daughter adheres to many tropes of the mystery thriller genre. It is a who-dun-it, a form of mystery where a crime has been committed, and the narrative follows the investigator as they seek to find out who committed the crime. In this case, the crime is the disappearance of Katrina after a struggle. Her daughter, Cleo, is the investigator who works to uncover the guilty party. The mystery is elevated to the thriller with its heightened stakes and sense of impending danger. There are several “jump scares” in the narrative, where something or someone suddenly appears in a way that is initially frightening though ultimately proved not to be dangerous, as when Aidan surprises Cleo while she is snooping on her mother’s laptop. The plot also uses red herrings, or misleading clues, to create twists and turns, a classic genre convention. For instance, it is suggested that the murder victim Doug Sinclair paid a bribe so that his daughter would be admitted to university, but this is ultimately disproven. In keeping with genre conventions, a final twist exposes the entire mystery and provides the solution to the who-dun-it.
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