内容简介
From the bestselling author of "The Egyptologist "and "Prague"comes an even more accomplished and entirely surprising new novel.Angelica is a spellbinding Victorian ghost story, an intriguingliterary and psychological puzzle, and a meditation on marriage,childhood, memory, and fear. The novel opens in London, in the1880s, with the Barton household on the brink of collapse. Mother,father, and daughter provoke one another, consciously andunconsciously, and a horrifying crisis is triggered. As thefamily's tragedy is told several times from different perspectives,events are recast and sympathies shift. In the dark of night, achilling sexual spectre is making its way through the house,hovering over the sleeping girl and terrorizing her fragile mother.Are these visions real, or is there something more sinister, andmore human, to fear? A spiritualist is summoned to cleanse theplace of its terrors, but with her arrival the complexities ofmotive and desire only multiply. The mother's failing health andthe father's many secrets fuel the growing conflicts, while thedaughter flirts dangerously with truth and fantasy. While "Angelica"is reminiscent of such classic horror tales as "The Turn of theScrew" and "The Haunting of Hill House," it is also a thoroughlymodern exploration of identity, reality, and love. Set at the dawnof psychoanalysis and the peak of spiritualism's acceptance,Angelica is also an evocative historical novel that explores thetimeless human hunger for certainty. ""Angelica," Arthur Phillip'sspellbinding third book, cements this young novelist's reputationas one of the best writers in America, a storyteller who combinesNabokovian wit and subtlety with a narrative urgency that rivalsStephen King" -"Washington Post" "From the Hardcover edition."