Sin [Hardcover] Hart, Josephine

Product Description Ruth smiles, but beneath the surface nurses a hatred as powerful as the sea, and as sharp as the coldest of blades. The object of Ruth's malevolence is her cousin, Elizabeth -- orphaned at nine months and raised by Ruth's parents as their own -- whose very presence stole Ruth's birthright as only child. From this twisted sense of betrayal grows an envy, dark as night, from which there can be but one refuge: Elizabeth's destruction. From the Paperback edition. From Publishers Weekly Fans of Hart's bestselling Damage will undoubtedly flock to the bookstores to snatch up her second novel, but they may be disappointed by this one, which essentially marks her as a one-note writer. Again there is an insistent yet oblique narrative voice; this time it belongs to Ruth, who is insanely envious of her cousin/sister Elizabeth, adopted by Ruth's parents when her own family died in an accident. Calling herself a "malevolent creature," Ruth realizes that her desire to destroy kind, generous Elizabeth is the expression of a warped psyche. When she succeeds in seducing Elizabeth's husband, Sir Charles, Ruth exults in their lasciviously detailed red-hot sex, but after he repudiates her, she experiences terrible pain. The staccato sentences that successfully propelled Damage are here reduced to fragments so truncated they cry out for parody; elsewhere, Hart's prose is terminally overwrought: "Ferocity had etched something high, cold and silver onto my face." Readers will discern a pattern in Hart's plot technique: obsession leads to evil, betrayal and lust, then to painfully ironic complications and eventually to tragic, symbolic retribution. The trouble this time around is that the melodrama palls and the frisson of suspense is lacking. 100,000 first printing; BOMC alternate. (Aug. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This fascinating follow-up to Hart's astonishing debut novel, Damage ( LJ 2/15/91), focuses on the sin of envy, embodied here by the narrator, Ruth. Ruth is corrosively jealous of her orphaned cousin Elizabeth, who was raised and cherished by Ruth's parents as their own daughter. She hates the good, generous, kind Elizabeth and waits for the moment when she will be able to break her rival and take everything. Her compelling voice makes Sin as readable as Damage , but the root of her envy never seems completely believable, and the brevity of the novel works against the author's intent. Was Ruth (badly misnamed by her parents, as it turns out) born with this fatal streak of envy, or was she struck by it in the one episode from her childhood which Hart offers as explanation? Though flawed by its failure to clarify this central point, Sin remains a disturbing, provocative work, sure to be eagerly sought by readers of Damage . Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/92. - Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Despite the pre-pub hoopla, this severe little tale of sisterly envy isn't the equal of Hart's widely praised debut, Damage (1991)--or maybe the author's real but slender gifts are just wearing out in unintentional self-parody. Ruth and Elizabeth are cousins raised as sisters; golden Elizabeth's parents died, and she was taken into Ruth's parents' home before Ruth was ever born. Cheated of her birthright, Ruth reacts with a pathological jealousy that alternately festers and hatches malevolent plots. Her plan to betray Elizabeth (who's grown into a minor painter of skyscapes) with her attentive husband Hubert is foiled by his indifference and accidental death (he leaves behind only an asthmatic son, Stephen), but she succeeds with Elizabeth's second husband, proper, haunted Sir Charles Harding, the magnate who buys her father's publishing house--the affair commencing when Charles comes to break the news of her father's death. As this tasteful adultery progresses, though, things begin to go