Constance

Description

The aloof and enigmatic Constance Schuyler lives alone in Manhattan when she meets Sidney Klein, a professor of poetry twenty years her senior, at a literary party. A few weeks later, he proposes marriage and Constance accepts, moving into his dark, book-filled apartment. But Constance is tortured by a bitter past. When her father makes a devastating revelation, Constance's fragile psyche suffers a profound shock. Her marriage, already tottering, threatens to collapse completely. Sidney can only watch and wait, doubting his own moral strength. Constance's consolation is the friendship of Sidney's boy Howard, a strange, delicate child, not unlike Constance herself...

Patrick McGrath is the author of a short story collection, Blood and Water and Other Tales, and seven previous novels including Asylum, Martha Peake, Port Mungo and Trauma, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. He has also published Ghost Town, a volume of novellas about New York. Spider was made into a film in 2002 by acclaimed director David Cronenberg. Patrick McGrath lives in London and New York.

Patrick McGrath is one of the age's most elegantly accomplished divers into the human psyche, and in his new novel he brings us another resonant sounding from that deep well. Constance is an intricate, multi-layered and, in the end, surprisingly tender work from a master writer -- John Banville Superb ... Constance is a beautifully wrought creation who stands at the book's centre like a cool column of marble ... The New York location, not to mention Constance's neurotic flights, may put one in mind of Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. McGrath has long been a great writer of modern gothic ... Brilliant -- George Pendle * Financial Times * McGrath has the gift, the storyteller's gift, to compel attention, so that you gaze rapt into the fire and listen to the tale unfold * Sunday Times * A famously brilliant storyteller -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * Sensational plot -- Catherine Taylor * Sunday Telegraph * Elegant psychological thriller -- Kate Saunders * The Times * Pages of flamboyant morbidity and Durer-like imagination ... Rarely have love lives appeared so blasted and disturbed -- Ian Thomson * Scotsman * McGrath excels in his descriptions of the city -- Catherine Taylor * Telegraph * For page-turning lit-noir and psychological fault lines, McGrath has become hard to beat and, in Constance, Sixties literary types with their ready-made neuroses prove a rich vein * GQ * The foremost writer of modern, psychological gothic ... Ultimately less bleak than some of McGrath's other work, Constance confirms him as a masterful writer not just of gothic but of complex relationships in crisis * Sunday Times * A fantastic read ***** * Western Mail * Patrick McGrath's luminous, nuanced writing lifts the novel out of the ordinary * ***Lady * McGrath's fiction has always been adept at building ominous atmosphere, and Constance is filled with doomy clues that things will not end well * Guardian * Subtle and ingenious and provocative * Spectator * Engrossing * Sunday Times Summer Reads * A stately, artful realism ... This is McGrath at his most subtle and restrained. The novel is told in carefully paced chapters ... In synthesizing the best of his earliest writing with those strengths acquired during the evolution of his work, McGrath has proved himself once again to be among the most resourceful of our contemporary novelists * Times Literary Supplement * Triumphantly, McGrath manages to combine psychological interest with an elegant, engaging story. Constance is a tender tale woven with a creeping sense of discomfort. McGrath's prose is understated but never simple, reaching its heights in the dizzying, lyrical descriptions of 1960s New York * Literary Review * A fascinating examination of the effect of childhood trauma on the adult, and the folly of sinking into lifelong victimhood -- Leyla Sanai * Independent *