Sin - Softcover

Josephine Hart

3.42

949 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009925381X ISBN 13: 9780099253815

Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd, 1993

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Sin, like Josephine Hart's third novel The Stillest Day, is an explicitly cautionary tale. Ruth Ashbridge is, from childhood, obsessively jealous of her orphaned cousin Elizabeth. At first, her envy leads her into only minor misbehaviour--adopting her smile, stealing her jewellery and silk underwear. Yet these small thefts quickly escalate into major transgressions as Ruth sets about stealing Elizabeth's husband and her happiness. The confessional nature of Hart's first-person narrative suits the outpouring of hatred and envy. Ruth's position is succinctly summed up: "Like Satan before the Fall, I came to hate the very nature of goodness, to fear its power." However, her emotion is occasionally overemphasised and the descriptions of her overwrought, resulting in Ruth sounding unintentionally comic. She says of her own marriage to Dominick: "We were balanced. His love. My coldness." With Sin, Josephine Hart aims to create a modern biblical parable. In order to foreground the didactic content of her novel, Hart keeps characterisation to a minimum, shunning the complex psychology and narrative tension of her first novel Damage. In Hart's world, sin--succumbing to an impulse in complete disregard of its consequences--leads inescapably to tragedy. Through that tragedy, the heroine will learn too late the true value of goodness. --Vanessa Cook --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Ruth is beautiful, intelligent and privileged, but she can never be satisfied - there is a moral vacuum where her heart should be. She envies her cousin Elisabeth and this obsession leads her inexorably to tragedy. By the author of "Damage".

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From the Inside Flap:

Ruth smiles, but beneath the surface nurses a hatred as powerful as the sea, and as sharp as the coldest of blades. The object of Ruth's malevolence is her cousin, Elizabeth -- orphaned at nine months and raised by Ruth's parents as their own -- whose very presence stole Ruth's birthright as only child. From this twisted sense of betrayal grows an envy, dark as night, from which there can be but one refuge: Elizabeth's destruction.
From the Paperback edition.

About the Author:

Josephine Hart is the acclaimed author of novels which include the bestselling Damage, made into a major film, and Sin, which was filmed in 2001 by Metropolis.

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