Description:
David Plante's delicately plotted and exquisitely written novels chart the dynamics of unbelief and faith, self-absorption and revelation, rationalism and mysticism. All of his creations are indirect, letting in the light from odd and surprising angles. There is always something both unsettling and profoundly moving about his spiritually nuanced novels.
In Annunciation three people are drawn together on a journey of soul. In London, middle-aged Claire is doing research on the paintings of a 17th century artist called Testa whose works are focused on darkness. This lapsed Catholic is still grieving for a husband who committed
David Plante's delicately plotted and exquisitely written novels chart the dynamics of unbelief and faith, self-absorption and revelation, rationalism and mysticism. All of his creations are indirect, letting in the light from odd and surprising angles. There is always something both unsettling and profoundly moving about his spiritually nuanced novels.
In Annunciation three people are drawn together on a journey of soul. In London, middle-aged Claire is doing research on the paintings of a 17th century artist called Testa whose works are focused on darkness. This lapsed Catholic is still grieving for a husband who committed suicide. More pain is added to her burden when Rachel, her 16-year-old daughter, is raped. Claire resolves to lift the spirits of her depressed child.
Meanwhile in New York City, Claude, a melancholy editor at a publishing house that specializes in art books, feels disconnected from his life. He tries to revive himself in an affair with a sexy London journalist, but it doesn't help. Claude is close to his Russian-American cousin, a woman who shares with him a deep sense of grief over the plight of the world. When she kills herself, he takes a transfer to London for six months.
There Claude meets Claire and falls in love with Rachel. Maurice, an art devotee, volunteers to help Claire track down a previously undocumented painting by Testa on the Annunciation. These four seekers all meet in Russia where death, new life, and epiphanies abound like manna in the wilderness.
Plante understands that too much focus on the light hinders true spiritual seeking. The dark must be honored along with its mysteries. That is the theme of this novel. Or as Wendell Berry has written: "To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."
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Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
Release date: 16 May 1994
ISBN-10 : 0395680913 |
ISBN-13: 9780395680919
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