Angelica
A Novel
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
“A masterpiece . . . seamlessly mixes psychological disintegration, the dissolution of a marriage and . . . a classic ghost story.”—USA Today
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“Angelica impresses first as a clever send-up of the late Victorian novel, and then becomes its own very original thing.
It is engrossing, deeply moving, and—precisely because it is moving—very frightening.”—Stephen King
London, the 1880s. In the dark of night, a chilling spectre is making its way through the Barton household, hovering over the sleeping daughter and terrorizing her fragile mother. Are these visions real, or is there something more sinister, and more human, to fear? As the family’s story is told several times from different perspectives, events are recast, sym- pathies shift, and nothing is as it seems.
Set at the dawn of psychoanalysis and the peak of spiritualism’s acceptance, Angelica is a spellbinding Victorian ghost story, an intriguing literary and psychological puzzle, and a thoroughly modern exploration of identity, reality, and love.
Praise for Angelica
“Starts as a ghost story . . . turns into a spectacular, ever-proliferating tale of mingled motives, psychological menace, and delicately told crises of appetite and loneliness.”—The New Yorker
“Spellbinding . . . cements this young novelist’s reputation as one of the best writers in America.”—The Washington Post Book World
BONUS: This edition contains excerpts from Arthur Phillips's The Tragedy of Arthur, The Song Is You, Prague, and The Egyptologist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in Victorian England, Phillips's impressive third novel uses four linked viewpoints to explore class, gender, family dynamics, sexuality and sciences both real and fraudulent, ancient and newly minted. Joseph Barton, a London biological researcher, orders his four-year-old daughter, Angelica, who's been sleeping in her parents' bedroom, to her own room. Joseph's wife, Constance, resists this separation from her child and the resumption of a marital intimacy that, given her history of miscarriage, may threaten her life. Soon Constance notices foul odors, furniture cracks and a blue specter that appears to attack Angelica while she sleeps. When she reports these supernatural visitations to the unimaginative Joseph, the rift between them widens. Desperate, Constance turns to actress-turned-spiritualist Annie Montague for help. Phillips (Prague) captures period diction and detail brilliantly. At its strongest, the multiple-viewpoint narration yields psychological depth and a number of clever surprises; at its weakest, it can slow the book's momentum to an uncomfortably slow (if authentically Victorian) pace. Author tour.
