Property - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Valerie Martin (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>From the acclaimed author of "Mary Reilly" comes a groundbreaking novel set in the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, told by Manon Gaudet, a female slave owner who speaks about her past, her present, and her longings in an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart of moral darkness.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>Valerie Martin's <b>Property </b>delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery's venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.<br>Exploring the permutations of Manon's own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, <b>Property</b> unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>"This fresh, unsentimental look at what slave-owning does to (and for) one's interior life must be a first. The writing--so prised and clean limbed--is a marvel." --Toni Morrison</p><p> </p><p>"Chilling...disturbing...intriguing. A compelling contest of wills between two women...against a chaotic backdrop of black night and leaping torchlight." --<i>The New York Times</i></p><p> </p><p>"Sharply observer.... A strikingly unsentimental voice.... In fewer than 200 pages, Martin is able to summon up historical landscapes her readers have never seen." --<i>Newsday</i></p><p> </p><p>"Quietly devastating.... Shows a dimension of American slavery that nonfiction could not get across.... A work of sustained irony.... As chilly and arresting a picture of slavery as you'll find anywhere." --<i>The Boston Globe</i></p><p> </p><p>"It is possible that we have never heard a voice like this before... a timeless, chilling voice, eerily like the voice of the German people after the Holocaust... [With it] Valerie Martin opens a window on that evil of human nature that makes one group of people less than another." --<i>Winston-Salem Journal</i></p><p> </p><p>"So riveting that once you start reading this slender novel, it's unlikely you'll put it down. A bitter, mesmerizing account of the caustic costs of slavery." --<i>Detroit Free Press</i></p><p> </p><p>"Confirms that Martin is a vibrant force in American fiction... Martin uncovers the violent nature of slavery, ownership and property." --<i>The New Orleans Times-Picayune</i></p><p> </p><p>"A ferociously honest book [on] a subject long wrapped in 'lies without end': race in America.... Manon is a shadow sister to Scarlett O'Hara, offering [us] the unvarnished voice of her time.... [This is] fiction that can remake the way we understand ourselves." --<i>Salon</i></p><p> </p><p>"Martin's explorations of character are unsparing as she reveals both Manon and Sarah in all their desperate humanity. A brave and riveting book." --<i>O, The Oprah Magazine</i></p><p> </p><p>"The real achievement is that Martin leaves us wondering what 'peculiar institutions' we are embracing in our own world." --<i>The News & Observer</i></p><p> </p><p>"Brilliant... chilling clarity...<i>Property</i> is historical fiction that is both literary and literal in that it poetically bares a truth." --<i>New York Daily News</i></p><p> </p><p>"Vivid and gripping. I read it in one gulp." --Marilyn French</p><p> </p><p>"Martin's writing is graceful, controlled and precise...The breadth of Martin's interests are remarkable. She moves around flawlessly in time and space: nothing frightens her." --Fay Weldon</p><p> </p><p>"As chilling and satisfying as anything she has written. . . . A fierce and uncompromising book, a bracing and cathartic work of art." --<i>Chicago Tribune</i></p><p> </p><p>"In this stunningly powerful novel, Valerie Martin's gifts-a fearless originality and seemingly limitless perspective combined with a cool and elegant intelligence-are all on splendid display." --Barbara Gowdy</p><p> </p><p>"A wonderful novel, vivid, revealing." --Carol Shields</p><p> </p><p>"[<i>Property</i>] is a brilliant, chillingly revelatory piece of fiction, a work of craft, economy and such good merciless observation-one of those rare, crucial novels illuminating a history we think we know and understand so that after we've read it we'll never forget its truths." --Ali Smith</p><p> </p><p>"Tightly constructed [and] suspenseful. . . . Manon is a vividly presented voice, precociously cynical, mordantly amusing, despairing. . . . A subtly cadenced novel of racial and sexual transgressions." --<i>The New York Review of Books</i></p><p> </p><p>"Fraught with tension, desperation, and rage, all masterfully sustained. . . . An unflinching depiction of our nation's most shameful historical chapter." --<i>Los Angeles Times</i></p><p> </p><p>"Compelling. . . . A painful yet elegant study of . . . the authority of the mighty over the deprived. . . . Astonishing." --<i>The Washington Post</i></p><p> </p><p>"Quick-paced and absorbing . . . chilling, understated and brilliant." --<i>The Miami Herald</i></p><p> </p><p>"A fascinating little gem of darkness." --<i>San Francisco Chronicle</i></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Valerie Martin is the author of two collections of short fiction and six novels, including <b>Italian Fever</b>, <b>The Great Divorce</b>, and <b>Mary Reilly</b>. Her most recent book is a nonfiction work on St. Francis of Assisi: <b>Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis</b>. She resides in upstate New York.
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