Scan barcode
qqchelsea's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
saloni_d's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ecarter611's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic! This little book is like one long and beautiful prose poem. Couldn’t put it down! #ilovebooksaboutspinsters #theresaconvent!
kostia_gorobets's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
nathansnook's review against another edition
4.0
Colors, angles, lines, faces, mirrors, what confines us?
How do we define ourselves beyond the limits of our own understanding? The imagination? The hurt? The love? How do we urge actions into adjectives? How do we express ourselves and our intentions?
What colors? What shapes?
I'm reminded of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's recent
How do we define ourselves beyond the limits of our own understanding? The imagination? The hurt? The love? How do we urge actions into adjectives? How do we express ourselves and our intentions?
What colors? What shapes?
I'm reminded of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's recent
spygrl1's review against another edition
4.0
Bethesda Barnet lives in a small town with her invalid mother. She teaches art. She is courted, in desultory fashion, by a local farmer. So modest is Bethesda that even when she bathes she does not bare her entire body.
Each Thursday afternoon, Bethesda meets with Lord Grantleigh in his conservatory. Do the two simply discuss art? She says that the local patron's "admiration of [her] work" led to the meetings, and she alludes to prints of shocking modern works with which Grantleigh confronts her.
Bethesda's life is altered when a new English teacher moves next door. She sees the rain-drenched face of Matthew Pearson and moments later she's drawing his face upon a mirror in order to preserve the vision. Bethesda transfers more and more parts of him to the mirrors in her room, collecting his hand, his feet, his shoulders...
Matthew's wife, Mary, is hugely pregnant. Mary has come for a visit one day when suddenly, in Bethesda's room, a stroke fells her. Bethesda breaks the mirror on which she first drew Matthew's face, and with a sharp shard of glass she cuts into Mary, pulling the living child from her dead womb.
Though her action is officially sanctioned, Bethesda knows that there are "other possible interpretations." And Matthew does not thank her. He bores a hole through the wall separating the two houses. He reaches through and asks Bethesda to wrap her hair tightly around his hand, and he stretches the strands painfully tight.
On the night Bethesda marries Samuel, they journey to a nearby town. Waiting for them is a gift from Matthew and a letter that Samuel reads. After reading it, he leaves Bethesda forever.
The intimacy between Bethesda and Lord Grantleigh seems to have grown. He asks her for "Tuesday as well as Thursday afternoons." He uses her first name instead of Miss Barnet. He tells her "You have me body and soul." What are they to one another? Surely lovers, though that is never declared.
But then a letter. "I will no longer be able to be your protector," he writes. "Lady Grantleigh has informed me, Bethesda, that your position is untenable." She is offered a suite in the city or a convent. Mistress or supplicant. She chooses the abbey.
Bethesda paints, though we are never told the subject. We know only that her work disturbs and scandalizes the nuns. The remainder of the book is told mostly through overheard conversations as Bethesda listens to the abbess and the doctor as they speak to a visitor who is sickened by a sight of Bethesda's "distorted" features. Apparently her art includes self-mutilation. No mirrors are permitted.
The visitor, sent by Lord Grantleigh, apparently is Matthew, come to fetch Bethesda and her art back to the world.
"Now a last painting will be my gift to you to assuage long hunger and grief. Through the years I have felt your hunger. It devoured me, as it devoured you. For we all need someone else to bleed.
"So sit and watch now as I break another painted mirror. Onto which you have been reflected again. ... I cut here. Can you see? Can you see the laceration? Watch the color come and go. Pure red. Unrivaled by the artist. ...
"Do you, I wonder, approve my handiwork? Do you approve your handiwork? My weapon bears the outline of your hand upon it. You're growing paler. But wait, I will grow whiter still than you. Whiteness beyond whiteness. Purity beyond purity....
"At last I'm borne away. From life. Life which is perhaps best lived as a dream."
And in the end, Lord Grantleigh sells the paintings.
I said In the Cut wanted to seem dreamlike. What it wanted to seem like was The Stillest Day.
Each Thursday afternoon, Bethesda meets with Lord Grantleigh in his conservatory. Do the two simply discuss art? She says that the local patron's "admiration of [her] work" led to the meetings, and she alludes to prints of shocking modern works with which Grantleigh confronts her.
Bethesda's life is altered when a new English teacher moves next door. She sees the rain-drenched face of Matthew Pearson and moments later she's drawing his face upon a mirror in order to preserve the vision. Bethesda transfers more and more parts of him to the mirrors in her room, collecting his hand, his feet, his shoulders...
Matthew's wife, Mary, is hugely pregnant. Mary has come for a visit one day when suddenly, in Bethesda's room, a stroke fells her. Bethesda breaks the mirror on which she first drew Matthew's face, and with a sharp shard of glass she cuts into Mary, pulling the living child from her dead womb.
Though her action is officially sanctioned, Bethesda knows that there are "other possible interpretations." And Matthew does not thank her. He bores a hole through the wall separating the two houses. He reaches through and asks Bethesda to wrap her hair tightly around his hand, and he stretches the strands painfully tight.
On the night Bethesda marries Samuel, they journey to a nearby town. Waiting for them is a gift from Matthew and a letter that Samuel reads. After reading it, he leaves Bethesda forever.
The intimacy between Bethesda and Lord Grantleigh seems to have grown. He asks her for "Tuesday as well as Thursday afternoons." He uses her first name instead of Miss Barnet. He tells her "You have me body and soul." What are they to one another? Surely lovers, though that is never declared.
But then a letter. "I will no longer be able to be your protector," he writes. "Lady Grantleigh has informed me, Bethesda, that your position is untenable." She is offered a suite in the city or a convent. Mistress or supplicant. She chooses the abbey.
Bethesda paints, though we are never told the subject. We know only that her work disturbs and scandalizes the nuns. The remainder of the book is told mostly through overheard conversations as Bethesda listens to the abbess and the doctor as they speak to a visitor who is sickened by a sight of Bethesda's "distorted" features. Apparently her art includes self-mutilation. No mirrors are permitted.
The visitor, sent by Lord Grantleigh, apparently is Matthew, come to fetch Bethesda and her art back to the world.
"Now a last painting will be my gift to you to assuage long hunger and grief. Through the years I have felt your hunger. It devoured me, as it devoured you. For we all need someone else to bleed.
"So sit and watch now as I break another painted mirror. Onto which you have been reflected again. ... I cut here. Can you see? Can you see the laceration? Watch the color come and go. Pure red. Unrivaled by the artist. ...
"Do you, I wonder, approve my handiwork? Do you approve your handiwork? My weapon bears the outline of your hand upon it. You're growing paler. But wait, I will grow whiter still than you. Whiteness beyond whiteness. Purity beyond purity....
"At last I'm borne away. From life. Life which is perhaps best lived as a dream."
And in the end, Lord Grantleigh sells the paintings.
I said In the Cut wanted to seem dreamlike. What it wanted to seem like was The Stillest Day.
More...