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Loading... Sleep, Pale Sister (P.S.)by Joanne Harris
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I'm enjoying this book very much. Joanne Harris captivates the reader with a somewhat dark story. A lot of intrigue, a lot of evil plotting, a lot of passion. (  )betizuka | Jan 10, 2009 |   The themes in this story are very gothic; lust, drugs, madness, revenge, and murder. A Pre-Raphaelite artist, Henry Chester, marries his seventeen year old model Effie who he has been using as a model since she was eleven. He portrays her in his paintings as an innocent, but on their wedding night she displays sexual desires. He has psychological issues involving religion and his mother which causes him to be guilt ridden about having sex with his wife. Henry is cruel to Effie and tries to control her by giving her laudanum. She turns to a lover, Mose. Mose introduces her to the local madam, Fanny, who knows Effie's husband because he frequents her brothel. Fanny concocts a plan to extort money from Henry, but Effie and Mose don't realize that Fanny has her own reasons for destroying Henry's life. Each chapter of this book is told from a different characters point of view. This helps you to understand Henry's cruelty, Mose's selfishness, how easily manipulated Effie is, and Fanny's dark motives. This book was very hard to put down. The story was very engaging. (  )craso | Sep 23, 2008 | One of the author's earlier works and in my opinion also one of her best. Set in Victorian England it tells the tale of a painter who marries a beautiful 17 year old girl who is his favourite model. He has a dark shameful past and it all catches up with him to reach a fantastic conclusion. In this book we have death, love, obsession, sex, murder and magic. A tremendous read and one I fully recommend. ( )kehs | Aug 26, 2008 | Gripping. Immensely haunting and ethereal. Characters were a tad underdeveloped, but I forgave it as I turned page after page after page...What a pleasantly dark and pessimistic tale from such a pleasantly optimistic author. The role of Devil's Advocate certainly becomes Ms. Harris. (  )MoiraStirling | Jun 11, 2008 | I had mixed feelings about this but there was enough of a plot to keep me reading and wondering what would happen. It's a very dreamlike read - a lot of the characters spend a lot of time numbing their senses with various substances and this is reflected in the narrative. I'm not sure whether I will read Joanne Harris again - I get the impression that this book is very different to her others so I may try another one out at some point. (  )judyb65 | May 15, 2008 | 0.099 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0060787112, Paperback)Before the sweet delight of Chocolat, before the heady concoction that is Blackberry Wine, and before the tart pleasures of Five Quarters of the Orange, bestselling author Joanne Harris wrote Sleep, Pale Sister -- a gothic tourde-force that recalls the powerfully dark sensibility of her novel Holy Fools. Originally published in 1994 -- and never before available in the United States -- Sleep, Pale Sister is a hypnotically atmospheric story set in nineteenth century London. When puritanical artist Henry Chester sees delicate child beauty Effie, he makes her his favorite model and, before long, his bride. But Henry, volatile and repressed, is in love with an ideal. Passive, docile, and asexual, the woman he projects onto Effie is far from the woman she really is. And when Effie begins to discover the murderous depths of Henry's hypocrisy, her latent passion will rise to the surface. Sleep, Pale Sister combines the ethereal beauty of a Pre-Raphaelite painting with a chilling high gothic tale and is a testament to Harris's brimming cornucopia of talents. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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