The Phoenix - Softcover

Sims, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590210468 ISBN 13: 9781590210468

Publisher: Lethe Press, 2009

Synopsis

At fourteen, Kit St. Denys brought down his abusive father with a knife. At twenty-one his theatrical genius brought down the house. At thirty, his past and his forbidden love — nearly brought down the curtain for good.

This is a compelling Victorian saga of two men whose love for each other transcends time and distance and the society that considers it an abomination. Set in the last twenty years of the 19th century, The Phoenix is a multi-layered historical novel that illuminates poverty and child abuse, theatre history in America and England, betrayal, a crisis of conscience, violence and vengeance, and the treatment of insanity at a time when such treatment was in its infant stage. Most of all it is a tale of love on many levels, from carnal to devoted friendship to sacrifice.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Like Tess of the d'Urbervilles or Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, this Victorian novel is replete with plot twists, years-long detours, providential meetings, villainy, and a great deal of drama. It differs from most other Victorian novels in that the main characters who meet and fall in love are both men, one an adopted son with a dark secret and Dickensian background who has taken on a new identity, and the other an uptight doctor with a strong religious background.

Kit St. Denys, who began life as Jack Rourke, is an up-and-coming actor in London. He has gone from poverty and abuse at fourteen when he fatally stabs his abusive father, to riches when he is adopted by a man who introduces him to the world of the wealthy and the theatre.

Nick Stuart is a troubled man who becomes estranged from his strict, unforgiving father when he goes off to medical school. Although his father is also a doctor, he is unwilling to allow his son to step beyond the small village and turns his back on Nick when he leaves home.

Kit and Nick meet after one of Kit's critically acclaimed performances and, from there, they begin a troubled but madly-in-love relationship that takes many years to resolve. Nick's religious beliefs cause him the deepest pain in loving Kit: "He loved Kit in the way God meant him to love a woman. It was as simple and as soul-damning as that."

While this problem should have been enough to doom their relationship, Kit has demons of his own, never able to shake the nightmares of his father's abuse, nor of the night he left him for dead. And yet Kit and Nick persevere through numerous reversals of fortune, years of estrangement, entanglements, and madness in a snake pit even Joan Crawford would find disheartening.

The author fulfills the implied promise to bring all the subplots together in a logical and satisfying resolution at the end of the novel. The main characters and supporting cast are fully developed and believable, and like any good Victorian novel, the villain is one who can be booed and hissed off stage, without being melodramatic. This is Sims's debut novel, but her imagination and delight in creative wordplay will take her satisfied readers everywhere they want to go.

From the Author:

"The Phoenix" was many years in the making, and it’s my pride and joy. There is more than one phoenix in this story. ... Kit himself, who becomes someone else, though always struggling not to be consumed by the flames of his past. ... the deep but troubled love between Kit and Nick, a relationship that crashes and burns more than once ... Kit’s identity itself and finally his very existence seems to disappear in flames, leaving Nick to recover on his own. If I had to put it into just two words, I’d say: Destruction. Regeneration. I hope readers will come to care as much about the characters as I do.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lethe Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1590210468
• ISBN 13: 9781590210468
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 372