Book-It '10! Book #34
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: Sleep, Pale Sister by Joanne Harris
Details: Copyright 2005, Harper Perennial
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Before the sweet delight of Chocolat, before the heady concoction that is Blackberry Wine, and before the tart pleasures of Five Quarters of the Orange, bestselling author Joanne Harris wrote Sleep, Pale Sister - a gothic tour de force that recalls the powerfully dark sensibility of her novel Holy Fools.
Originally published in 1994 - and never before available in the United States - Sleep, Pale Sister is a hypnotically atmospheric story set in nineteenth century London. When puritanical artist Henry Chester sees delicate child beauty Effie, he makes her his favorite model and, before long, his bride. But Henry, volatile and repressed, is in love with an ideal. Passive, docile, and asexual, the woman he projects onto Effie is far from the woman she really is. And when Effie begins to discover the murderous depths of Henry's hypocrisy, her latent passion will rise to the surface.
Sleep, Pale Sister combines the ethereal beauty of a Pre-Raphaelite painting with a chilling high gothic tale and is a testament to Harris's brimming cornucopia of talents."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I enjoyed Chocolat, was utterly in love with its sequel The Girl with No Shadow and have realized I've developed a fondness for Harris's lush gift with settings.
How I Liked It: I was slightly uneasy as this was one of Harris's first and could quite possibly have been out of print because it wasn't that great and her popularity after Chocolat created a demand for any work of hers, good or no.
But while this had a slow, plodding start, it found its footing and is typical of Harris's work (at least, in the two I've read before this one) with its riveting plot and decadent prose. Harris employs (and I'm wondering if she does this in all her work) multiple narrators for the story, a literary trick that can all too easily go horribly awry (well, in fairness, be needlessly complex and throw off the thread of the plot) but is superbly employed in Harris's hand.
Harris has done wonderfully with strong themes in her works that I've read (Chocolat: indulgence, The Girl with No Shadow: identity) and this is no different. The recurring theme of suspended animation (sleep and death being interchangeable, both seeking and rebelling against numbness) is explored in this novel in tricks as close possibly to Alice Sebold's delicate literary tactics in The Lovely Bones. The Tarot is another theme, but more of a backdrop-- each section holds the name of a card (and yes, Harris goes for broke and goes beyond the Major Arcana, a welcome change for this Tarot enthusiast/student). As far as Paganism is discussed (this book does list, in many searches, under "Pagan+fiction"), in addition to from aspects of Paganism (that can exist outside the subject) such as the aforementioned Tarot, the use of scrying, and of astral projection, a character notes that due to her gifts, in previous centuries she would've surely burned as a Witch (lowercase w used by Harris) due to her gifts for glamours and psychism (which is again, more "witch-synonymous-with-magic-maker" rather than Witch), but she also displays reverence (which the main character echoes, however half-consciously) for many Pagan Gods and Goddesses, also referenced by many characters, however more as a historical curiosity (or in the case of the villain, superstitious heresy/claptrap). The main character is suggested to have "gifts beyond her understanding" of the magic-making variety and more interestingly she displays an attitude towards sexuality that's undoubtedly Pagan (All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals, as The Charge of the Goddess states) when she professes confusion as to why her enthusiasm for sex on her wedding night is so coldly rebuffed by her puritanical husband. Although she explains to the reader that her father (now dead) had taught her as a child
"that there was no harm in the physical act between a man and a woman in love; it was God's reward, he said, for procreation. We are feeling beings, he used to tell me, innocent until evil thoughts take our innocence away. Our original sin was not the search for knowledge, but the shame that Adam and Eve had of their nakedness. It was that shame which sent them from the garden and which keeps us from the garden now." (pg 38)
which while Christian in name, is again, Pagan in practice, particularly in the shunning of shame (to say nothing of the fact the story of Adam and Eve is coated in Pagan symbolism).
The story is capped with an O. Henry-esque twist (with a good dose of Harris's fanciful prose) and manages to be just as beautiful and compelling as her later work.
Notable: Harris understandably talks a great deal (in the "PS" edition which contains a "DVD extra"-esque back section with interviews with the author) about the decision to re-issue Sleep, Pale Sister. Most interestingly in the switch of editions, she thanks artist Graham Ovenden for "the cover I always wanted". She discusses (again, in the "PS" edition) that she happened to come across a documentary on television on the artist Graham Ovenden while she was working on the book and felt a "strong parallel between the dual face of childhood that Graham portrayed and the lead character in the book that I was writing."
Harris's publishers at the time were unwilling to commission such a "controversial" artist (Ovenden's work is largely nude prepubescent girls) and Harris, was forced to go with "The Child Enthroned" by Thomas Cooper Gooch (which she defends on her site as "equally troubling and beautiful" as her first choice, Ovenden's work).
With the author now secure in her profession and the book warranting a reissue, Harris notes that the painting that originally inspired her, "Girl in Shadows", which she felt had the face of her heroine, not only adorns the cover of the reissue, but the original now hangs in her front hall.
Also interesting, Harris talks of the friendship she developed with Ovenden in the time that she was trying to convince her publishers to patronize his work and the years that followed. She promised him that if she ever had more than pocket money, she would commission from him a portrait of her daughter, who was born the same year Sleep, Pale Sister was first released, who would at the time "in ten years be at about the right age" (as Ovenden's primary subjects are, as mentioned before, prepubescent girls).
Ten years later, Harris was able and said she did just that and Ovenden's portrait of her daughter now hangs in her bedroom.
When you consider that the factor that brought Harris and Ovenden's friendship into being was her novel about an artist who develops a fetish and fascination with a model who first posed for him as a ten-year-old girl, it's... somewhat discomforting?
Title: Sleep, Pale Sister by Joanne Harris
Details: Copyright 2005, Harper Perennial
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Before the sweet delight of Chocolat, before the heady concoction that is Blackberry Wine, and before the tart pleasures of Five Quarters of the Orange, bestselling author Joanne Harris wrote Sleep, Pale Sister - a gothic tour de force that recalls the powerfully dark sensibility of her novel Holy Fools.
Originally published in 1994 - and never before available in the United States - Sleep, Pale Sister is a hypnotically atmospheric story set in nineteenth century London. When puritanical artist Henry Chester sees delicate child beauty Effie, he makes her his favorite model and, before long, his bride. But Henry, volatile and repressed, is in love with an ideal. Passive, docile, and asexual, the woman he projects onto Effie is far from the woman she really is. And when Effie begins to discover the murderous depths of Henry's hypocrisy, her latent passion will rise to the surface.
Sleep, Pale Sister combines the ethereal beauty of a Pre-Raphaelite painting with a chilling high gothic tale and is a testament to Harris's brimming cornucopia of talents."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I enjoyed Chocolat, was utterly in love with its sequel The Girl with No Shadow and have realized I've developed a fondness for Harris's lush gift with settings.
How I Liked It: I was slightly uneasy as this was one of Harris's first and could quite possibly have been out of print because it wasn't that great and her popularity after Chocolat created a demand for any work of hers, good or no.
But while this had a slow, plodding start, it found its footing and is typical of Harris's work (at least, in the two I've read before this one) with its riveting plot and decadent prose. Harris employs (and I'm wondering if she does this in all her work) multiple narrators for the story, a literary trick that can all too easily go horribly awry (well, in fairness, be needlessly complex and throw off the thread of the plot) but is superbly employed in Harris's hand.
Harris has done wonderfully with strong themes in her works that I've read (Chocolat: indulgence, The Girl with No Shadow: identity) and this is no different. The recurring theme of suspended animation (sleep and death being interchangeable, both seeking and rebelling against numbness) is explored in this novel in tricks as close possibly to Alice Sebold's delicate literary tactics in The Lovely Bones. The Tarot is another theme, but more of a backdrop-- each section holds the name of a card (and yes, Harris goes for broke and goes beyond the Major Arcana, a welcome change for this Tarot enthusiast/student). As far as Paganism is discussed (this book does list, in many searches, under "Pagan+fiction"), in addition to from aspects of Paganism (that can exist outside the subject) such as the aforementioned Tarot, the use of scrying, and of astral projection, a character notes that due to her gifts, in previous centuries she would've surely burned as a Witch (lowercase w used by Harris) due to her gifts for glamours and psychism (which is again, more "witch-synonymous-with-magic-maker" rather than Witch), but she also displays reverence (which the main character echoes, however half-consciously) for many Pagan Gods and Goddesses, also referenced by many characters, however more as a historical curiosity (or in the case of the villain, superstitious heresy/claptrap). The main character is suggested to have "gifts beyond her understanding" of the magic-making variety and more interestingly she displays an attitude towards sexuality that's undoubtedly Pagan (All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals, as The Charge of the Goddess states) when she professes confusion as to why her enthusiasm for sex on her wedding night is so coldly rebuffed by her puritanical husband. Although she explains to the reader that her father (now dead) had taught her as a child
"that there was no harm in the physical act between a man and a woman in love; it was God's reward, he said, for procreation. We are feeling beings, he used to tell me, innocent until evil thoughts take our innocence away. Our original sin was not the search for knowledge, but the shame that Adam and Eve had of their nakedness. It was that shame which sent them from the garden and which keeps us from the garden now." (pg 38)
which while Christian in name, is again, Pagan in practice, particularly in the shunning of shame (to say nothing of the fact the story of Adam and Eve is coated in Pagan symbolism).
The story is capped with an O. Henry-esque twist (with a good dose of Harris's fanciful prose) and manages to be just as beautiful and compelling as her later work.
Notable: Harris understandably talks a great deal (in the "PS" edition which contains a "DVD extra"-esque back section with interviews with the author) about the decision to re-issue Sleep, Pale Sister. Most interestingly in the switch of editions, she thanks artist Graham Ovenden for "the cover I always wanted". She discusses (again, in the "PS" edition) that she happened to come across a documentary on television on the artist Graham Ovenden while she was working on the book and felt a "strong parallel between the dual face of childhood that Graham portrayed and the lead character in the book that I was writing."
Harris's publishers at the time were unwilling to commission such a "controversial" artist (Ovenden's work is largely nude prepubescent girls) and Harris, was forced to go with "The Child Enthroned" by Thomas Cooper Gooch (which she defends on her site as "equally troubling and beautiful" as her first choice, Ovenden's work).
With the author now secure in her profession and the book warranting a reissue, Harris notes that the painting that originally inspired her, "Girl in Shadows", which she felt had the face of her heroine, not only adorns the cover of the reissue, but the original now hangs in her front hall.
Also interesting, Harris talks of the friendship she developed with Ovenden in the time that she was trying to convince her publishers to patronize his work and the years that followed. She promised him that if she ever had more than pocket money, she would commission from him a portrait of her daughter, who was born the same year Sleep, Pale Sister was first released, who would at the time "in ten years be at about the right age" (as Ovenden's primary subjects are, as mentioned before, prepubescent girls).
Ten years later, Harris was able and said she did just that and Ovenden's portrait of her daughter now hangs in her bedroom.
When you consider that the factor that brought Harris and Ovenden's friendship into being was her novel about an artist who develops a fetish and fascination with a model who first posed for him as a ten-year-old girl, it's... somewhat discomforting?