I wrote in longhand, on a lined copy book and I believe, though the originals are now in Boston, that few changes were made to these opening chapters when the novel was published in early 1991.

This amazing short book is a profound essay not so much on the theme of “erotic obsession” as the author claims, but on the very nature of human attachment and the obsession with fusion with the other. But his life lacks passion, and his aching emptiness drives him to an all-consuming, and ultimately catastrophic, relationship with his son’s fiancée. A production of The Vortex, of which I was the producer, was still running in the West End and I was planning a another, of Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince.Tsunami, avalanche, major fire spring to mind all could be conceived of as an act of God or the work of evil. Dazed and utterly confused, he tumbles backwards, hits the low banister and falls down the stairwell. From a psychological point of view this might be seen also as primal original event which will set into motion an avalanche of other equally inescapable and devastating events that will impact upon the lives of those at the epicentre and those at the peripheries. This treasure trove of letters, stories, essays, poems, selections from diaries and journals, and excerpts from novels covers WW II from seemingly every conceivable angle.

Thanks only to the encouragements of her editor that the novel was finished as it was probably intended from the beginning. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Just then the MP is casually introduced to his grown-up son's enigmatic girlfriend Anna and helplessly falls for her.When the unnamed narrator, a reputable physician and rising MP, meets mysterious, compelling Anna Barton, ``the shock of recognition passed through my body like a powerful current. Anna immediately acknowledges the erotic bond between them, and the two begin a frenzied affair, its moral complications exacerbated by the fact that Anna is the narrator's son's fiancee. He climbs up a flight of stairs to the top floor, opens the unlocked door to the apartment, and is shocked to see his father making love to his fiancée. The MP runs down the stairs completely naked, finding Martyn dead, sprawled out on the ground floor. In his seventh outing, Burke, Vachss's flinty ex-con and relentless crusader for abused kids last featured in Sacrifice , is still reeling after having killed a kid in a previous case gone sour.

There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. I have read all of her five novels and eagerly awaited the next one when by chance learned of her death. A second screen adaptation has been released in April 2023 as a four-part limited series for Netflix, under the title Obsession.

After Damage and Sin comes Oblivion--and that's just what most readers will wish for as they peruse the pages of this pretentious novel.