A Recent Martyr
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- CHF 2.00
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- CHF 2.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
'Few have written so surprisingly, so convincingly, as Valerie Martin about sexual obsession and the perverse twistings of the human heart' Margaret Atwood
'The writing - so prised and clean limbed - is a marvel' Toni Morrison
Set in New Orleans, this is a novel about a love triangle. Married mother, Emma Miller, is bored with her husband, her job and her life so she begins a passionate, often violent, affair with Pascal Toussaint, a sadist with whom she becomes obsessed. Pascal, in the meantime, is fixated on a young novice called Claire D'anjou. Claire seems rather cold, is devout to an extreme, and is prone to visions. Pascal's father describes her as 'not satisfied with being only mortal'. Emma endures the same sort of self-effacement in her relationship with Paul as Claire does in her struggle towards religious purity. This is all set against the backdrop of a city overrun by rats and awash with a mysterious plague.
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Employing a plot as seemingly trite as: woman loves man; woman leaves man; life goes on, Martin (Set in Motion, Alexandra achieves a memorable novel, redolent with the tropical corruption that is so much a part of the charm of New Orleans. Beneath narrator Emma's description of her affair with Pascal and the self-discoveries it prompts, Martin bares the question of the individual's relationship with God. The affair is a painful one physically, and Emma's discovery of how it has corrupted her morally is paralleled by shocking events in the city: fuel shortages, municipal bankruptcy, garbage strikes, mysterious deaths of rats and humans. During the crisis, Claire D'Anjou, who has been sent home from her convent novitiate because she is "too fervent,'' touches the lives of Pascal and his family, of Emma and her daughter, and of sundry citizens of New Orleans. Martin's proseclean, precise and to the pointgives much pleasure. Her skill and style lift what might otherwise be a trivial, sensationalist tale into a subtle, witty novel.
