All Will Be Revealed
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
At the close of the nineteenth century, wheelchair-bound Augustus Auerbach’s only interest is his extraordinarily lucrative business: the manufacture and marketing of pornographic photographs. His outlook is forever altered, however, when one of his models pressures him to attend a séance. There, Augustus meets the medium Verena Swann, a beautiful widow who gives voice to the long-dead spirit of his beloved mother.
Through a series of private sittings, Verena and Augustus form first a friendship, then a romance–a relationship challenged by greed, obsession, jealousy, and the ghosts of relationships past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in late 19th-century New York City, Siegel's second novel (after All the Money in the World) provides a fascinating tour of a pornographer's studio and a reluctant spiritual medium's parlor. Crippled from a childhood illness, the reclusive Augustus Auerbach has built a fortune in the pornography business; largely confined to his opulent mansion and rarely encountering people who are not employees or models, Auerbach is as incurious about others' lives as he is clueless about his own. His controlled existence begins to unravel when one of his models brings him to a s ance conducted by the widowed (and crooked) medium, Verena Swann, who apparently connects him with the spirit of his self-absorbed and long-dead mother. As Verena attempts to escape her fraudulent vocation and the manipulative proposals of her business partner and brother-in-law, Leopold, an improbable romance blossoms between her and Auerbach. Siegel lays bare Verena's and Augustus's vulnerabilities as skillfully as they exploit those of others, but the novel's conclusion, which turns on Leopold's implausible machinations, fails to live up to its early promise. Readers willing to forgive the ending will find a richly detailed and seedily seductive narrative.
