This was a very gripping story I couldn't put it down and was not disappointed with it.
From the dust jacket:
Josephine Hart's previous two novels were international best sellers. With "Oblivion" she compels us to question our relationship with the dead: our desire to remember them...and to forget.
Laura is dead, but she will not go away. Her mother has enshrined her memory; her husband, Andrew, is continually haunted by her presence--even while making love to another woman to whom he cannnot commit. He struggles to come to terms with Laura's death. He is immobilized in life. He exists within shadows of memories of his dead wife, until he meets an uncompromising and manipulative playwright whose subject is death and who believes that "happiness is a decision" Make it. And don't cry." Her play's cast-like the memories of the dead-is disturbing: the killer who knows death too well; the abused wife who died a chilling death; the golden girl with a wish for immortality; the soldier haunted by a dead comrade; and a man emotionally dead long before his murder.
Andrew becomes caught between the pain of living and the memories of the dead, traumatized by the recognition that the memory of the only woman he has ever desired will, through life's brutality, be lost. In this haunting and ethereal story the dead demand to be heard, crying oiut for revenge, forgiveness, understanding. Above all they want to be rescued from the second oblivion of death.
"Oblivion" is a daring and beautiful novel in which disturbing truths about death and sex. Love and remembrance are much at heart.
Josephine Hart's previous two novels were international best sellers. With "Oblivion" she compels us to question our relationship with the dead: our desire to remember them...and to forget.
Laura is dead, but she will not go away. Her mother has enshrined her memory; her husband, Andrew, is continually haunted by her presence--even while making love to another woman to whom he cannnot commit. He struggles to come to terms with Laura's death. He is immobilized in life. He exists within shadows of memories of his dead wife, until he meets an uncompromising and manipulative playwright whose subject is death and who believes that "happiness is a decision" Make it. And don't cry." Her play's cast-like the memories of the dead-is disturbing: the killer who knows death too well; the abused wife who died a chilling death; the golden girl with a wish for immortality; the soldier haunted by a dead comrade; and a man emotionally dead long before his murder.
Andrew becomes caught between the pain of living and the memories of the dead, traumatized by the recognition that the memory of the only woman he has ever desired will, through life's brutality, be lost. In this haunting and ethereal story the dead demand to be heard, crying oiut for revenge, forgiveness, understanding. Above all they want to be rescued from the second oblivion of death.
"Oblivion" is a daring and beautiful novel in which disturbing truths about death and sex. Love and remembrance are much at heart.
Hart's earlier book DAMAGE was a great book. Written in the first person by a man that sees himself as a monster for what he has done; by his own acts he has destroyed not only his own life but that of everyone he loves. Oblivion was awful. How could the same person have written both books?
