“Vickers has turned a thwarted romance in to a serious page-turner.” —Time Out
For psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. David McBride, death exerts an unusual draw. Despite his profession, he has never come to terms with the violent accident that took his brother's life, a trauma that has shaped his life. But when a failed suicide, Elizabeth Cruikshank, comes into his care, he finds the deepest reaches of his suppressed history being reactivated. Elizabeth is mysteriously reticent about her own past and it is not until David recalls a painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio that she finally yields her story. As she recounts the chance encounter which took her to Rome, and her tragic tale of passion and betrayal, David begins to find a strange and disturbing reflection of his own loss in the haunted “other side” of this elusive woman.
In distinctive, graceful prose, Salley Vickers explores the ways both love and art can penetrate the complexities of the human heart, to invade and change our being, and the possibilities of regeneration through another's vision and understanding.
“[A] hypnotic chronicle of quiet desperation . . .. Vickers . . . delivers wrenching conflicts of love within and outside of marriage.” —Publishers Weekly
“[A] moving, utterly engrossing novel.” —The Guardian
“If you enjoy the work of Marilynne Robinson, Penelope Fitzgerald, James Salter or Anita Brookner, you should be reading Vickers. All these authors reflect, with grace and gravity, on life's moments of sorrowful epiphany.” – Michael Dirda, Washington Post
