Vida Winter, a bestselling yet reclusive novelist, has created many outlandish life histories for herself, all of them invention. Now old and ailing, at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to biographer Margaret Lea - a woman with secrets of her own - is a summons. Vida's tale is one of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family: the beautiful and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling, but as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction and she doesn't trust Vida's account. As she begins her researches, two parallel stories unfold. Join Margaret as she begins her journey to the truth - hers, as well as Vida's.
This was one of those rare books that constantly caught my eye in the bookstore, until finally I broke down and got it. To be honest I was sure what to expect out of it, and I didn't really even know what kind of book it was, so I was pleasantly surprised with the way it turned out. It's the type of book that draws you in so subtly that you have no idea you're hooked until you try to put it down. A very very good book
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30 January, 2010:
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30 January, 2010:
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