You are currently browsing the daily archive for June 14th, 2007.
To delve into a book completely is, to me, the greatest part of reading. There is great freedom in suspending your own internal voices and embracing a story without reservation. Which isn’t easy when the voices in your head are used to being listened to (as mine are). Oftentimes part of this suspension is allowing yourself to be easily led where the author wants you to go. Which can be exactly where you don’t want to go and sometimes it can be away from something you want to see. They lock the doors and take the lights out on the stairs. All we can do is turn away and go where the path is open.
I make a habit of not reading book sleeve synopses. If I did, I might have been forewarned. Angelica is divided into four parts. I was only two sentences into part two when I realized I had been duped. Part one is centered on Mrs. Barton (Constance) and a pernicious spector haunting her life. I believed it all without reservation – it’s a great ghost story through and through. Of course she’s haunted. Of course she’s unable to remove it. Of course she hires someone to expel it from the house. Of course her husband has something to do with it.
