Helpful Score: 2
Ugh. The back of the book made it sound interesting: an erotic tale of forbidden love in Victorian England between a proper wife and a convict. Boy, was it wrong. VERTIGO was gossipy drivel and characterless events ping-ponging one after the other with no sense of foreseeable point and end.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Mrs. Emma Smith makes a resolution to be a better person. Her novelist husband, John, whom she has known since they were little, decides that the way she is to go about this is to strike up a letter correspondence with a convict in prison, a Chance Wood. At first his replies are frustratingly hostile, but then they get staggeringly intimate and inappropriate. Chance asks Emma questions no one, not even her husband, has even cared to ask, seeming to really care about her, to care about them opening up to one another.
As Chance and Emma grow closer, Emma desperately weaves lies to prevent John from finding out, and she finds it more and more pointless to engage in the same social strife she and John have always been a part of. She withdraws into her mind, into the world she has created for Chance and herself.
And then comes the day Chance is released from prison. After that, Emma's life explodes.
There. I made it sound all âoooh' nice, but read at your own risk.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Mrs. Emma Smith makes a resolution to be a better person. Her novelist husband, John, whom she has known since they were little, decides that the way she is to go about this is to strike up a letter correspondence with a convict in prison, a Chance Wood. At first his replies are frustratingly hostile, but then they get staggeringly intimate and inappropriate. Chance asks Emma questions no one, not even her husband, has even cared to ask, seeming to really care about her, to care about them opening up to one another.
As Chance and Emma grow closer, Emma desperately weaves lies to prevent John from finding out, and she finds it more and more pointless to engage in the same social strife she and John have always been a part of. She withdraws into her mind, into the world she has created for Chance and herself.
And then comes the day Chance is released from prison. After that, Emma's life explodes.
There. I made it sound all âoooh' nice, but read at your own risk.
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