Product Description

From the bestselling author of The Egyptologist and Prague comes an even more accomplished and entirely surprising new novel. Angelica is a spellbinding Victorian ghost story, an intriguing literary and psychological puzzle, and a meditation on marriage, childhood, memory, and fear.

The novel opens in London, in the 1880s, with the Barton household on the brink of collapse. Mother, father, and daughter provoke one another, consciously and unconsciously, and a horrifying crisis is triggered. As the family’s tragedy is told several times from different perspectives, events are recast and sympathies shift.
In the dark of night, a chilling sexual spectre is making its way through the house, hovering over the sleeping girl and terrorizing her fragile mother. Are these visions real, or is there something more sinister, and more human, to fear? A spiritualist is summoned to cleanse the place of its terrors, but with her arrival the complexities of motive and desire only multiply. The mother’s failing health and the father’s many secrets fuel the growing conflicts, while the daughter flirts dangerously with truth and fantasy.

While Angelica is reminiscent of such classic horror tales as The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House, it is also a thoroughly modern exploration of identity, reality, and love. Set at the dawn of psychoanalysis and the peak of spiritualism’s acceptance, Angelica is also an evocative historical novel that explores the timeless human hunger for certainty.

“Angelica, Arthur Phillip's spellbinding third book, cements this young novelist's reputation as one of the best writers in America, a storyteller who combines Nabokovian wit and subtlety with a narrative urgency that rivals Stephen King"  –Washington Post


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266320 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-12
• Released on: 2008-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Set in Victorian England, Phillips's impressive third novel uses four linked viewpoints to explore class, gender, family dynamics, sexuality and sciences both real and fraudulent, ancient and newly minted. Joseph Barton, a London biological researcher, orders his four-year-old daughter, Angelica, who's been sleeping in her parents' bedroom, to her own room. Joseph's wife, Constance, resists this separation from her child and the resumption of a marital intimacy that, given her history of miscarriage, may threaten her life. Soon Constance notices foul odors, furniture cracks and a blue specter that appears to attack Angelica while she sleeps. When she reports these supernatural visitations to the unimaginative Joseph, the rift between them widens. Desperate, Constance turns to actress-turned-spiritualist Annie Montague for help. Phillips (Prague) captures period diction and detail brilliantly. At its strongest, the multiple-viewpoint narration yields psychological depth and a number of clever surprises; at its weakest, it can slow the book's momentum to an uncomfortably slow (if authentically Victorian) pace. Author tour. (Apr.)
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From The New Yorker
Phillips’s third novel, set in Victorian London, starts as a ghost story. When Joseph instructs his wife, Constance, to have their four-year-old daughter, Angelica, moved from their bedroom into a room of her own, Constance becomes convinced that a seductive spectral force is preying on the child. The catastrophe that follows is relayed from the perspectives of Constance; of her supposed redeemer, an actress turned exorcist; and of Joseph—each view ultimately being rendered by the adult Angelica. What at first appears a rather glib ghost story predicated on Victorian clichés of sexual repression and patriarchal tyranny turns into a spectacular, ever-proliferating tale of mingled motives, psychological menace, and delicately told crises of appetite and loneliness. Phillips sustains a pastiche of Victorian writing and ideas with enticing playfulness, and without making his characters or their complex fears and desires laughable.
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From Bookmarks Magazine
In Angelica, the talented Arthur Phillips (Prague, ***1/2 Nov/Dec 2002) pays homage to Henry James's famous ghost story, "The Turn of the Screw," but piles on multiple viewpoints to add maddening and obscure layers to the story. Reviewers loved the way Phillips tackles Freudian issues and shows how men and women process the same narrative differently. His pacing may strike some as slow—it is a Victorian novel, after all—but it yields a chilling, surprising tale of great psychological depth. "Readers seeking linearity and simplicity would do well to avoid Phillips' work," suggests the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Those comfortable with a layered open-endedness, however, should enjoy it, then linger over its intellectually satisfying vapors."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

An Exceptional Novel
It's rare that a contemporary writer can offer a compelling plot and such marvelous language skills that his reader is totally transported to another place and time. Phillips does exactly that with his latest novel, ANGELICA. I was drawn in with the opening sentence and completely fascinated until the last paragraph. It's a wonderful read, filled with insights - both historical and psychological - and will be perfect for my book club to discuss.

An Amazing Achievement
ANGELICA is a book I could not put down. I could have finished it in two days but saved the last thirty pages for the following day, because I didn't want it to end. Aside from the masterful storytelling that gave me all the suspense and excitement of a good read, this is a brilliant and thought-provoking book on several levels. It is a deeply important book that explores the nature of reality, memory, and identity. If you are a woman, it is a must-read. It addresses our deepest secrets and our worst fears in a most imaginative and insightful manner. I still can hardly believe a man wrote this book. He is clearly a tremendously compassionate person who has done a great service by writing this book. I could discusss ANGELICA for hours--which makes it a perfect book group choice.

His best work yet
I've read all three of Arthur Phillips's books and liked each one more than the last. Any moments of uneveness evident in "Prague" had disappeared by the time he wrote "The Egyptologist." It is rare in this disposable era to watch a writer grow into his talent, but that is exactly what Phillips has done. "Angelica" is a stellar, completely assured work. Whether you like Victorian ghost stories or just strong writing, this is your book.