- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Counterpoint,U.S.; 1st Counterpoint Ed edition (1 May 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1887178651
- ISBN-13: 978-1887178655
- Product Dimensions: 16.3 x 11.9 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,387,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Gripping. (DAILY TELEGRAPH )
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
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 Sades work of the same name. It chronicles one mans 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 womans 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. With her first novel, the young Scottish writer Alice Thompson performs a bold experiment in the neo-Gothic, spinning out an extravagant tale that charts the borders between contempt and desire. Set in contemporary London, Justine chronicles one mans obsession with beauty and his journey through the darkest recesses of the mind in its pursuit.A sensitive art collector, nameless throughout, becomes enchanted by Justine, the portrait that hangs above his mantel. Enthralled, he spends hours in his flat, smoking opium and watching the beautiful woman in the painting, her hard pale eyes, set wide apart in her face. The image comes to life, sometimes watching him coyly from a formal garden, sometimes glaring at him from a shadowy room. Searching London for the object of his ravening desire, he finds on separate occasions two women: Justine, a refined and chiseled beauty, and her identical twin Juliette, a complex and reckless woman who seems driven by rage. He is never sure when or where he will see them, and they never appear together. As the story unfolds, he finds it increasingly difficult to know the true identity of the evasive and evanescent woman he desires, and his vivid opium-seasoned hallucinations become indistinguishable from reality. In exhilarating short chapters that take him through a morphing landscape, our narrators nightmare builds to a violent and haunting climax.Ruthlessly clever, Justine ropes in references from the Marquis de Sade and Milton, from Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Alfred Hitchcock. Playfully twisting and teasing Sadean conventions to suit her purposes, Thompson sets up a labyrinth of tricks and tropes that inevitably lead us to a place where our familiars--gender and power, passion and violence--are not what they seem.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This astonishing first novel tells the tale of an opium smoking aesthete's obsessive desire and pursuit of a mysterious femme fatale through the streets of contemporary London. The style is fabulously rich and dreamy, evoking Huysmans and the 1890s as much as the 1990s. The references to De Sade are overt, but Sadegh Hedayat's legendary cult novel 'The Blind Owl' also seems a likely influence.
The plot is an intriguing puzzle that opens out beyond mere tricksiness into a deadly accurate study of the nature of male infatuation. So accurate that it was initially a surprise that a woman writer should understand these things so precisely - but then, who better?
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
AN INTERESTING, GENTLY EROTIC MYSTERY
7 Jun 2002
Format:Hardcover
I discovered Alice Thompson's JUSTINE quite by accident -- and I'm rather glad I did. I was put off at first when I read about its relation to DeSade's writings -- I didn't really want to read a re-hash of that. Upon further inspection, I decided to give it a try.
It's not one of the best books I've read in the last year, but I thought it was quite well-written and interesting. The narrator was just odd enough (in an English way [no offense to you UK residents!]) to make him slightly endearing, even with his rampant obsessive qualities. Without giving away the outcome, I'll add that I suspected what it would be -- but I didn't feel this detracted much from the suspense of the story.
There is quite a bit of eroticism at play here -- but it's understated and subtle, not overt. Those readers who might shy away from something labelled 'erotic', thinking to avoid soft-core (or worse) pornography need not be concerned. The erotic/sexual content of the novel is tasteful and not given to over-wrought, photo-like descriptions -- Thompson has exercised subtlety and taste here.
I didn't notice that the author was a member of the Woodentops until I was well into the book -- it's nice to see someone who has had some success in one artistic genre branching out into another, exercising her talents and imagination.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Pretentious and underachieving
12 July 2001
Format:Paperback
I must admit that I have not read any of de Sade's works, so my review may be colored by that fact. However, I felt that the narrator's voice was tiresome and uninteresting. His take on being an appreciator of beauty wore thin on me. Even with a mild deformity, he was uninteresting. I figured out the story line ahead of time and felt nothing about any of the characters. I wasn't expecting an erotic novel, but I was hoping to get what the book jacket advertised, "the wit of Wilde, the sublimity of Poe." It didn't even come close. Save your money or look elsewhere for something more engaging. Sorry.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Very Interesting
17 Jun 2000
Format:Hardcover
Justine, by Alice Thompson, is a very interesting read. I especially liked the way reality and fantasy are interwined and can hardly be separated. It was a very nice book, though I'm sure my reading it in a Hebrew translation has flawed it's charm. But even in translation, the writing is very flowing and it was simply impossible to put the book down (though I did have a test to study to, at the time). All and all, a very recomended book for th lovers of good fiction.
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