Defiance: a Novel Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Defiance: a Novel Book

Harvard physics professor Bernadette O'Brien lies in a Georgia prison cell, awaiting execution for the murder of two students, killings that were performed as the culmination of intricate sexual ensnarements. As she prepares to die, Bernadette writes her life story in a notebook. That is the plot of Defiance... but this is not a novel that can be reduced to its plot; Carole Maso, in fact, repeatedly undermines efforts to glide through a straightforward narrative, plunging readers into the mind of her narrator. The novel's power comes not from its events, although those are certainly jarring enough, but from the ways in which those events are filtered through Bernadette's perspective--the juxtapositions of childhood traumas, mathematical puzzles, and cynical death row reflections (more than a few of which are inspired by the well-meaning social worker assigned to her case: "Not another stereotype at this late date. Please no."). Playing with various forms--symbolic logic, self-help literature, and sexual fantasy, among others--Maso takes a lurid tale and transforms it into a stunning glimpse into the mind of a woman who became a killer without, for all her sarcastic and unrepentant bravado, ever quite ceasing to be a victim. --Ron HoganRead More

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  • Product Description

    Bernadette O'Brien: misfit...child prodigy...professor of mathematics at Harvard...sentenced to die in the electric chair for the shocking murder of two male students. In her journal, her "death book," Bernadette takes a dark look back at the unfolding events that led to the extraordinary crime for which she was convicted.

    In the incandescent, erotically charged prose for which she is known, Maso probes the depths of a female psyche inextricably embedded in a uniquely American matrix of sexuality, violence, and the clash of class difference. A raw and fearless performance by an author of fierce vision, Defiance stays with readers long after they put the book down.

    "Dark-side aesthetiscism washes over you in waves, mixing wild pleasure and brutal fury." --Spin magazine

    "Shockingly original...a convincing study of a brilliant yet damaged mind, and a sharp exploration of new extremes of cynicism and darkness." --The Wall Street Journal

    "A dark and intelligent festival of the mind, a labyrinth of shattered mirrors." --Village Voice

    "Carole Maso...writes with the fury of Jeannette Winterson." --Los Angeles Times

    "Startling power...builds to a psychologically astute and emotionally devastating climax." --Out

    "A tour de force...Establishes her as one of the very best living novelists." --The Women's Review of Books, Wellesley College

  • 0452278295
  • 9780452278295
  • Carole Maso
  • 1 June 1999
  • G P Putnam's Sons
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 272
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