Justine [Hardcover]

Alice Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A postmodern, feminist variation on the Marquis de Sade's book of the same name, this American debut from Scots writer Thompson is a compelling, though abstract, meditation on identity and desire. The nameless male narrator, a handsome, wealthy aesthete whose physique is marred by a deformed foot, owns a portrait of a beautiful young woman named Justine. At his mother's funeral, he spies the portrait made flesh, but the real Justine leaves before he can speak to her. Later, he thinks he sees her again at an art museum, but this slightly less beautiful woman turns out to be Justine's twin sister, Juliette, whom the narrator seduces in hopes of finding her sister. When he does finally meet his reclusive beloved, she tells him that she is being stalked by an obsessive fan of her just-published novel, whom she fears is trying to kidnap her. Then Justine is apparently kidnapped, and Juliette also abruptly disappears, leaving the increasingly delusional narrator to search for the truth. More intellectual entertainment than explicit or transgressive fiction, Thompson's novel recalls John Fowles's The Magus or Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy more than it does the perverse and menacing work of de Sade?which will doubtlessly come as good news to some readers.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Scottish writer Thompsons second outing is her first hereand while some will groan at its jejune, vapid, imitative clunkiness, others will be smitten by its psycho-feminist puzzlings and probings. With debts to Henry James, Oscar Wilde, the Marquis de Sade, etc., etc., etc., Thompson takes a nameless and reclusive hyper-aesthete, makes him god-like of face and club of foot, surrounds him with glorious objets dart in his Kensington Gardens flat, and has him fall passionately in lovewith a portrait on the wall. Whether hes in love with the real Justine or the ideal Justine of the portrait, whether he loves the woman or wants to own her, remain (as theyve long, long had a way of doing) central to the mysteries, mazes, dreams, terrors, and tortures that follow, with an outcome that readers will have to find out for themselves. Our narrator, though, thinking himself divinely blessed by the fate of being spoken to by the real Justine in the stacks of a library ( Why me? Because of your face. It is like Michelangelos Adam reaching out to God ), ends up tricked, then tricked and tricked again not only by Justine but by Justines twin sister Juliette, even to the point of committing a murder (uh-huh, its very, very, very gory) in order to save Justine from a murderer of her ownthough from then on, things go badly indeed for Narrator, who will follow mazes and enter houses hes seen in dreams, find himself behind bars, lose his club foot, and... But one mustnt tell too much. Admittedly, there are brief moments, especially near the end, of psychological interest, mystery, even a certain penetration, though the road to them is well paved with banality (However, I could hardly take what she was telling me seriouslyit read like something out of a bad detective novel). For those, only, who like their mind- and gender-teasers in novel form. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint Press; 1st Counterpoint ed edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887178651
• ISBN-13: 978-1887178655
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 4.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,763,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AN INTERESTING, GENTLY EROTIC MYSTERY, June 7, 2002

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Justine (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:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretentious and underachieving, July 11, 2001

By 

A. Whitney (Silicon Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Justine (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:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting, June 17, 2000

By 

Lotan Sharon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Justine (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.