Justine (A Virago V) - Softcover

Alice Thompson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860493068 ISBN 13: 9781860493065

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

A challenging, chilling postmodern novel that explores the ill-defined margins between imagination and reality, sanity and madness.

This story of seductive decadence plays on the Marquis de Sade's work of the same name. It chronicles one man's obsession with beauty and his journey, through the darkest recesses of the mind, in its pursuit. An unnamed compulsive art collector becomes fascinated by a woman's portrait, one marked with a simple plaque that reads "Justine." Searching London for the object of his desire, he finds two women: Justine, a chiseled beauty, and her identical twin, Juliette. Rich in literary allusion, full of twists and turns, Justine, will appeal to readers looking for a challenge and a thrill.

About this title

About the Author

Alice Thompson, born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, studied English at Oxford University then toured with her rock group, The Woodentops. Justine, her first novel, received a Scottish Arts Council Award and shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (Scotland's oldest literary prize) with Graham Swift's Last Orders.

From Kirkus Reviews

Scottish writer Thompsons second outing is her first hereand while some will groan at its jejune, vapid, imitative clunkiness, others will be smitten by its psycho-feminist puzzlings and probings. With debts to Henry James, Oscar Wilde, the Marquis de Sade, etc., etc., etc., Thompson takes a nameless and reclusive hyper-aesthete, makes him god-like of face and club of foot, surrounds him with glorious objets dart in his Kensington Gardens flat, and has him fall passionately in lovewith a portrait on the wall. Whether hes in love with the real Justine or the ideal Justine of the portrait, whether he loves the woman or wants to own her, remain (as theyve long, long had a way of doing) central to the mysteries, mazes, dreams, terrors, and tortures that follow, with an outcome that readers will have to find out for themselves. Our narrator, though, thinking himself divinely blessed by the fate of being spoken to by the real Justine in the stacks of a library ( Why me? Because of your face. It is like Michelangelos Adam reaching out to God ), ends up tricked, then tricked and tricked again not only by Justine but by Justines twin sister Juliette, even to the point of committing a murder (uh-huh, its very, very, very gory) in order to save Justine from a murderer of her ownthough from then on, things go badly indeed for Narrator, who will follow mazes and enter houses hes seen in dreams, find himself behind bars, lose his club foot, and... But one mustnt tell too much. Admittedly, there are brief moments, especially near the end, of psychological interest, mystery, even a certain penetration, though the road to them is well paved with banality (However, I could hardly take what she was telling me seriouslyit read like something out of a bad detective novel). For those, only, who like their mind- and gender-teasers in novel form. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1860493068
• ISBN 13: 9781860493065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 137