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Loading... Angelica: A Novelby Arthur Phillips
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Moody, evocative, true to its Victorian setting, mysterious, satisfying. LadyintheLibrary | Jul 1, 2008 |   In this multi-layered and psychological Gothic ghost story, nothing is quite what it seems. Constance and Joseph Barton have one living daughter, Angelica, after a long string of disastrous miscarriages. Constance has been warned that another pregnancy would likely result in her death and has spurned her husband’s physical advances for the four years since Angelica’s birth. When Joseph finally insists that Angelica must move out of their master bedroom and into her own chamber, Constance fears for her life in the face of her hot-blooded husband’s desire. Soon, she begins to see a blue phantom hovering over her daughter’s bed at night and believes it is Joseph’s wrathful lust made manifest, threatening Angelica’s life in order to clear a path to Constance. Joseph reacts angrily when Constance expresses her fears about the ghost, and Constance seeks solace and aid from actress-turned-spiritualist Anne Montague. The story is told four times, by Constance, Joseph, Anne, and, finally, an adult version of Angelica herself. With each retelling, more details come to light about just what was going on and the reader’s allegiance subtly shifts each time. Were Constance’s fears justified? Was Joseph a cruel madman, or was Constance suffering a psychotic break? Did Joseph have immoral designs on his daughter as Anne believed, or did events in Constance’s past influence her views of the present? Complex and deliberately paced, “Angelica” depicts the psychology and repressive social mores of the Victorian era with satisfying depth and intelligence. (  )kmaziarz | Jun 14, 2008 | This book is described as a ghost story. It is a ghost story only in the sense that two of the characters, Constance, the wife, and Joseph, the husband, are haunted by their relationship with their parents. A better description of this book would be psychological mystery or thriller. We delve into the psyche of a Victorian era family; the husband is quiet and inaccessible, the wife cowers within her sphere, and the child is spoiled and runs the household with her beguiling ways. We see their lives through four different narratives; the wife, the spiritualist, the husband and the grown child. Each sees the situations of their lives very differently. The wife sees her husband as a tyrant that she must protect her child from. The spiritualist feels she is helping the mother, but is really manipulating the situation for her own selfish gains. The husband is clueless to his wife’s emotional needs. The child only wants the attention of the three adults. Inevitably, the combination of these different and opposing perspectives leads to tragedy. (  )craso | Apr 30, 2008 | I liked this book, because of the four narratives that each give another version of the same story. Original and well written. Maybe it's the translation, (Dutch), but I thought the style was a bit boring and overdone. This book makes you think and rethink some situations, which makes it almost interactive. (  )emhromp2 | Mar 31, 2008 | This is a chilling Victorian ghost story in the vein of "The Turn of the Screw." Mrs. Barton believes that her young daughter is the victim of a sexually driven nocturnal spirit. The family's tragedy is told from the perspective of Angelica's mother, her father, a bogus "spiritualist," and Angelica herself. Each person's version of reality is colored by their own psychological demons and self-induced deception. Which version is the true one?? ( )crazy4novels | Mar 25, 2008 | 0.056 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0812972600, Paperback)From the bestselling author of The Egyptologist and Prague comes an even more accomplished and entirely surprising new novel. Angelica is a spellbinding Victorian ghost story, an intriguing literary and psychological puzzle, and a meditation on marriage, childhood, memory, and fear.The novel opens in London, in the 1880s, with the Barton household on the brink of collapse. Mother, father, and daughter provoke one another, consciously and unconsciously, and a horrifying crisis is triggered. As the family’s tragedy is told several times from different perspectives, events are recast and sympathies shift. In the dark of night, a chilling sexual spectre is making its way through the house, hovering over the sleeping girl and terrorizing her fragile mother. Are these visions real, or is there something more sinister, and more human, to fear? A spiritualist is summoned to cleanse the place of its terrors, but with her arrival the complexities of motive and desire only multiply. The mother’s failing health and the father’s many secrets fuel the growing conflicts, while the daughter flirts dangerously with truth and fantasy. While Angelica is reminiscent of such classic horror tales as The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House, it is also a thoroughly modern exploration of identity, reality, and love. Set at the dawn of psychoanalysis and the peak of spiritualism’s acceptance, Angelica is also an evocative historical novel that explores the timeless human hunger for certainty. “Angelica, Arthur Phillip's spellbinding third book, cements this young novelist's reputation as one of the best writers in America, a storyteller who combines Nabokovian wit and subtlety with a narrative urgency that rivals Stephen King" –Washington Post From the Hardcover edition. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
LibraryThing AuthorArthur Phillips is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.
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