| Author: | Judith Hooper | ISBN: | 9781619026612 |
| Publisher: | Counterpoint Press | Publication: | October 1, 2015 |
| Imprint: | Counterpoint | Language: | English |
| Author: | Judith Hooper |
| ISBN: | 9781619026612 |
| Publisher: | Counterpoint Press |
| Publication: | October 1, 2015 |
| Imprint: | Counterpoint |
| Language: | English |
“[A] literary feast” of a novel that “portrays the exciting, frustrating, and perplexing private life of bed-ridden Alice [James]” (Publishers Weekly).
“In her mesmerizing first novel, Hooper enters the individualist mind-set of the enigmatic” Alice James. The brilliant 19th century diarist has spent much of her life in the shadow of her famous brothers—Henry, the celebrated novelist, and William, the eminent philosopher. By 1889, Alice is spending all of her time in bed in Leamington, England, suffering from maladies that doctors can only diagnose as hysteria (Booklist, starred review).
As Alice watches her brother’s lives play out on the world stage, keeping in touch through endlessly articulate and gossip-filled letters, she pines for their intellectual fulfillment and recognition. She also suffers daily fits that send her into swooning dreams of the past. From bed, she travels back to the London and Paris of her childhood. She returns to the family dinner table, visited by the intellectual elite of Boston. And she confronts her mercurial father, a brilliant man given to visions of angels.
The text includes an afterword in which Hooper explores the James family’s varied psychological ills and Alice’s own medical history, untangled, as far as possible, from Victorian medical concepts and beliefs.
“[A] literary feast” of a novel that “portrays the exciting, frustrating, and perplexing private life of bed-ridden Alice [James]” (Publishers Weekly).
“In her mesmerizing first novel, Hooper enters the individualist mind-set of the enigmatic” Alice James. The brilliant 19th century diarist has spent much of her life in the shadow of her famous brothers—Henry, the celebrated novelist, and William, the eminent philosopher. By 1889, Alice is spending all of her time in bed in Leamington, England, suffering from maladies that doctors can only diagnose as hysteria (Booklist, starred review).
As Alice watches her brother’s lives play out on the world stage, keeping in touch through endlessly articulate and gossip-filled letters, she pines for their intellectual fulfillment and recognition. She also suffers daily fits that send her into swooning dreams of the past. From bed, she travels back to the London and Paris of her childhood. She returns to the family dinner table, visited by the intellectual elite of Boston. And she confronts her mercurial father, a brilliant man given to visions of angels.
The text includes an afterword in which Hooper explores the James family’s varied psychological ills and Alice’s own medical history, untangled, as far as possible, from Victorian medical concepts and beliefs.
