20
Apr
2009
Angelica by Arthur Phillips
This is a weird book. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. One narrator tells the same story from various points of view. Kinda post-modernist, I guess. Except that it takes place in 19th century England.
In the end, the reader is still left with the mystery the narrator was trying to solve in her exposé. None of the stories really line up, and while the reader an kind of guess the answer, its not clear.
This, of course, is much like the set up for Phillips’ The Egyptologist, but while that book pulls it off smartly, this one falls flat.
Maybe that is because it’s slow moving, and doesn’t move faster when reading the same thing over and over, albeit gathering more facts along the way.
The premise is this: Mrs. Barton is one of those nutty, hysterical 19th century Enlgishwomen. Her husband (who it is stressed is half Italian, so not all Enlgishy) is insensitive to her condition. Mrs. Barton hires a sort of seer after seeing ghosts in the house, because she fears for her daughter, Angelica.
Is there really a ghost, or this past coming back to haunt the Bartons? And what is Angelica really in danger of?
It’s not as suspenseful as it sounds. In fact, now that I think about it, I think it actually gets duller with each retelling. While the reader gets to know the characters differently, suss out their motives and whatnot, the characters are not really developed in the literary sense.
Maybe this is partly because none of the characters are likable. The seer Mrs. Barton hires is at least interesting a bit quirky, but still rather flat. She has whole conversations with a friend using Shakespeare quotations. This is interesting to the Shakespeare fan, but otherwise merely serves as a plot device to veil the reader from what is going on.
The conclusion the reader is left with at the end is interesting, but neither poignant nor illuminating.
If you like this book/author, you might like:
(my reviews in blue)
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfeld
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Remembering Anna O.: A Century of Mystification by Mikkel Borsch-Jacobson
Drood by Dan Simmons
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Strange Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Other works by Arthur Phillips:
The Egyptologist
Prague
The Song Is You
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