Sin (VMC) Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Sin (VMC) Book

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 Read More

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  • Foyles

    'Sin might be the spearhead of a new fictional genre' ANTHONY QUINN, INDEPENDENT 'The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination ' NEW YORK TIMES'Shocking . . . unrelenting in its intensity . . . you won't be able to put it down' COSMOPOLITAN 'Though she wounded me beyond pain, I too inflicted deep hurt. Not born to murder her, still I sought to break her . . . Her name was Elizabeth Ashbridge. And I even envied her that.' A provocative novel of jealousy and betrayal between two rival sisters Ruth calls herself a malevolent creature, ruled since childhood by hatred and envy for her adopted sister, Elizabeth. She grew up in Elizabeth's shadow, always falling short of her goodness and generosity, constantly resenting her very presence in the family. As they grow old, Ruth sets out to destroy her without guilt or hesitation. Ruth will strike Elizabeth where she's most vulnerable-she will steal her husband and send her collapsing into ruin.Written in Hart's concise, striking prose, Sin is a powerful and compulsively readable exploration of hate-and the destruction and tragedy it begets. It's about a woman possessed by an obsessive envy, a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. From the author of the bestselling Damage, now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic.

  • Play

    'Though she wounded me beyond pain I too inflicted deep hurt. Not born to murder her still I sought to break her ...Her name was Elizabeth Ashbridge. And I even envied her that.' Sin is about a woman possessed by an obsessive envy a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Sin from the author of the bestselling Damage now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic. 'Stripped down to a single inexorable storyline that centres on the destructive power of passion. As in Les Liaisons Dangereuses innocence and virtue are cruelly and deliberately betrayed as the reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination ...a tour de force' New York Times

  • Blackwell

    * A revenger's tragedy of lust, cruelty and betrayal - the magnificent novel from Josephine Hart, reissued now as a Virago Modern Classic 'Though she wounded me beyond pain, I too inflicted deep hurt. Not born to murder her, still I sought to...

  • 1844087174
  • 9781844087174
  • Josephine Hart
  • 1 December 2011
  • Virago
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 192
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