claire-obscure (The Claire Quartet) [Kindle Edition]

Billie Hinton (Author)

Book Description

Lonely, unfulfilled, and envious of her best friend who has moved to Italy, Claire Caviness heads out to the same old club one night but takes a right turn out of her usual routine and meets Finn Weston, a mysterious and disturbed medical student who lures her into a folie a deux - a shared madness that forces Claire to look at the things she's tried desperately to leave behind. When Claire's friend Lucy is found dead and Finn is implicated in the murder, Raoul Duras, a Delta Force operator with a penchant for rescuing prostitutes, offers a way out of the madness. In a raw, edgy journey from trauma to restoration, Claire examines her deepest fears: grief for her distant mother and gay father, the awakening of her conflicted sexuality, and the darkness that pulls her to the intrigue and danger of two very different - and dangerous - men.

REVIEWS:

CRIME BOOK BEAT: Crime writers are generally like war correspondents, but Ms. Hinton doesn't require a flak jacket. Her writing is literate, evocative, and perceptive - even mesmerizing. Her mysteries aren't solved, they're dangled just ahead, just out of reach.

EIGHT CUTS GALLERY: I've come across some real gems on Kindle, and Billie Hinton's Claire-Obscure is one of the shiniest gems. What drew me to the book was the most primordial thing - the power of an image (and the beautiful title with its evocative double meaning), a cover that evokes the opening of Belle de Jour, and Renoir's painting Parapluies (my favourite in the whole world). I'm glad I was drawn because Billie Hinton is a wonderful writer, and Claire-Obscure a delightful, enigmatic masterpiece.

PRAISE FOR CLAIRE-OBSCURE:

"claire-obscure is sophisticated, eerie, fascinating, literary. It has a spare, sexy Duras feel and a Donna Tartt-like magnetic quality."-Peggy Payne, author of Revelation and New York Times Notable Book Sister India

"In claire-obscure, Billie Hinton creates three amazing and mysterious characters, in a fresh voice that has echoes of Donna Tartt and Sylvia Plath. Couldn't wait to see how it turned out, hated for it to end."-Dale Edgerton, author of Goneaway Road

"Simply brilliant; a lyric dreamsong."-J.S. Kindrick, former Special Operations soldier and author of Spirit Horses

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Billie Hinton lives on a small horse farm in North Carolina with her husband, two teenagers, three horses, a painted pony, two miniature donkeys, two Corgis, five cats, and many wild creatures visiting regularly. She sees magic happen every single day.

Product Details

• File Size: 550 KB
• Print Length: 285 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: November Hill Press; first edition (August 21, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004CFASCY
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #396,685 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Read a Million Dollar for $2.99 January 20, 2011

By G. James

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

claire-obscure

I am a reader, always have been, always will be. I made a comment on Arlene E.'s review to say I agreed 100% with what she had to say and I do.

Here's what I look for in a good read. I don't want to encounter generic characters who remind me of other characters in other novels. I don't want to know what's going to happen next (until it happens) and how the story will end. I don't want everyone to live happily ever after b/c that's not how life is. Claire-obscure is without a doubt a good read. Actually it's more than that. It's stimulating, it's enlightening, it's thought-provoking.

Claire, Raoul, and Finn are people I hadn't met before but I know them intimately now. I can relate to them easily on some levels but uneasily on others. They are conflicted people interacting in a complicated world, trying to find their way. To quote Claire: "What I know: every relationship is its own place, a country you live in for awhile and then you leave." I rejoiced and suffered with Claire in her travels. She'll be in my life for a long time.

Billie Hinton is a wonderfully skilled writer who brings characters, situations, and settings to life.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Seductive, stark and mesmerizing August 29, 2011

By Kathleen Valentine

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

claire-obscure is both horrifying and mesmerizing and not for the feint of heart. It is the story of Claire, a lost young woman, who grew up in a bleak family situation, the only child of a cold, bitter mother and a father who was coming to the acceptance of his homosexuality. At 17 Claire is brutally raped and from that point on she lacks any sense of boundaries or self-regard. She is intelligent and lovely but utterly and completely lost. She dresses in vintage clothing from consignment shops, writes secret letters to Virginia Woolfe, and works for a predatory bisexual woman named Ann whose husband manages to disappear at the most inconvenient times.

Billie Hinton has an extraordinary gift for language. Her writing is both mellifluous and harsh. She writes the story of Claire's conflicted relationship with two men, equally strange and remote in their own unique ways, with mesmerizing detail and a sort of come-hither sensuality that beckons you in then leaves you standing at the closed door wondering what just happened. It is intoxicating because I found myself getting annoyed at Claire and her constantly self-destructive behavior but yet so intrigued I couldn't stop reading.

The two men who soon find their way into Claire's life are equally hypnotic. Finn Weston is an affluent medical student who invites her to live with him in a huge apartment but she soon discovers that, while she is attracted to him and he is intensely possessive and controlling of her, he is incapable of a sexual relationship with her, though he seems quite able to function with other women. Claire's jealousy notwithstanding Finn becomes intimate with Lucy who winds up mysteriously dead - though nothing can be proven to the contrary, all of Claire's friends suspect Finn.

Her other lover, Raoul Duras, is part of a Special Forces Delta team and spends his free time rescuing prostitutes and other lost women. Claire becomes his new fascination but, even though he grows to love her and longs for her to live with him, she cannot bear his long absences when he is on assignment and so she returns to Finn. With Finn she begins a descent into degradation with other men, emotional and eventually physical violence, and other humiliations but she is held hostage by his claims to need her, to be helpless without her. The story becomes painful at times as Claire goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between these two men.

This is a well-crafted, deeply penetrating study of three people all with their own separate wounds. I was somewhat struck by the fact that Raoul, the eventual hero of the story, had the last name Duras because the haunting style of story-telling Hinton employs was reminiscent to me of some of the stories of French writer Marguerite Duras, particularly Ravishing of Lol Stein.

This is a very seductive book - not always easy to read but even harder to turn away from.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Haunting! June 4, 2012

By SSB

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am actually not sure what to think about this book. It is very well written but the author leaves you guessing about background. I only read it because I stumbled into the sequel and couldn't figure out some of the things that were going on. Claire truly is a ninny. She goes from one very sick man to another. I kept wondering about that. It becaomes a little heavy for me--much too introspective. I would like to have known more about Finn, Raoul and Bingham. I don't know much about their background after reading two books about them. They are rather depthless. Actually, so is Claire. Three stars for good writing. This is not, however, a book that makes you feel good. It is actually rather creepy. I don't think I'll read any more of the authors works.

More About the Author

Billie Hinton lives on a small horse farm with her husband, two teenagers, three horses, a painted pony, two miniature donkeys, five felines, and two Corgis. She sees magic happen every single day.