josephine hart

Josephine Hart has written five novels. She was immediately catapulted by her debut, 'Damage', transformed into a film by Louis Malle, with Juliette Binoche and Jeremy Irons. 'Sin', her second novel, like 'Damage' also takes a first person female narrator, expert in the art of lying and concealing. Hart is a master when it comes to strategies of dissimulation and sleazy revenges. Her prose has that special mood that some have compared to Daphne Du Maurier. I agree! What I really like is her capacity to play with the great abyss that exists between our internal worlds and our external, social personas. This is done deflty specially in the concise dialogues of 'Sin'. This novel begins with the protagonist's direct statement:

"I believe now that I was exposed too early to goodness and that I never recovered".

This is Ruth, a woman possessed by a terrible envy. From small acts of malevolence, she is drawn into a maelstrom of destruction, where innocence and goodness (embodied in her cousin, Elizabeth) are no defence. Elizabeth is an orphaned girl adopeted by Ruth's parents. She is blond, good and sweet. Ruth has curly, black hair... Ruth says that she even envies her name, which has a musical quality, unlike her own, too short and blunt. Similar to 'Damage', in 'Sin' this woman goes out of her way to get what she wants, destroying her cousin's life, through a series of manipulations, and losing quite a lot herself...