A tale about a woman's obsessional hated/envy towards her elder and adopted sister.

This small book is well written. Shows how envy can be so compelling, and that other things in life, like love, marriage, children, friends etcs that should bring joy, become meaningless.

Forget the reviews on the back cover such as "on a scale of a Jacobean tragedy" or an "inexorable storyline that centres in the destructive power of passion". I felt that the "tragedy" was not that tragic, and likewise for the "passion".

oooooo Revenge, Tragedy, lust betrayal AND cruelty all in one slim 164 pages, How can I lose?

RELEASE NOTES:

Never got to read this book, it gets pushed doen the pile. I have to face the fact that I may never get to read it and not hog it from its next reader.

At BC meetup

Edit on 11/5/5

OK OK Porterhouse Pub I was tired.....still am zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Picked up at tonight's MeetUp at The Porterhouse (er... not the Pumphouse).

Looks intriguing. Thanks Unbalanced for registering, and woosang for passing it on.

I thought this started well but then got a little weighed down with melodrama.

Still, it does well conveying character development in a relatively short novella.

Oooh, melodrama!! I need a dose of that in my life at the moment. Thanks all!

Soooo trashy! :) Makes an attempt to come off as all serious and high-brow, but fails miserably (in my opinion). All breathy short sentences and forced suspense... and more deaths than a Shakespeare tragedy!! Saying all that though I still enjoyed it - a guilty pleasure in the midst of all the other readings in which I actually have to concentrate. This just flowed along very brain-numbingly, and pleasantly too.

Bringing along to August meetup

Trashy - sounds about my style atm. Thanks hunnyb!

Everything about this book is short... the length, the sentences, the lifespans of the characters, the wit (was there any?)...

"But my creation, like Frankenstein's, discovered a life of its own."

If only the editor had taken these words to heart and chopped out the melodrama.... It reads like it is a set-up for a trashy TV miniseries. Hopefully someone else will enjoy it more than I did.

RELEASE NOTES:

I believe I've become a trash magnet!

I just opened the book at a random paage - I have to share
---------------
"Ruth"
"Elizabeth"
"I don't deserve this, Ruth"
I smiled briefly back at her.
"I don't deserve to be so happy. From the moment I saw him...."
"I'm sure he feels the same. Like Dante and Beatrice. 'I did but see her passing by and yet will love her till I die.'"
You always have the right words, Ruth. Always. It's such a gift."
-----------

Oh dear! Couldn't she find something suitable from Dante to quote? Perhaps language and translations were the problem. She had to use Elizabethan poet Barnabe Googe instead.

I suspect the book should bear the epitaph "abandon all hope ye who enter here"!

Well what can I say. I can see the telemovie staring Michelle Gellar now. Melodrama is a perfect description.

This piece of pulp fiction passed the time amusingly enough but it's not my usual fare. Thanks one and all for the deviation. And particularly Servalan who pushed it towards me at the last meetup for my amusement.

It certainly did have some literary shortcomings, however, but the most disapointing of all though was the misnomer.

There really wasn't a lot of 'sin' going on. We have to wait to page 80 for a sin to actually occur. As I had already read half the book waiting for a sin I felt I had to continue. Perhaps there would be more sin. Unfortunately not much I'm afraid.

I spotted 2 quotes that were definitely miscredited and didn't bother to look up the others - I figured the author didn't respect their readers enough to get those other's right either.

The writing style - yes short - actually terse. I felt Ruth (who would have been better being called Ruthless) seemed to be constantly shouting at people.

I was also puzzled by one of the character's measurements. I've never met any female who's bust is precisely the same measurement as their hips. Are we sure Josephine Hart is actually a woman or a male writing pseudo-salatious novels under a pen-name? Not that it matters I suppose.

Unfortunately the ending really let it down for me. If only Ruth stayed Ruthless and had a nasty end, perhaps with some sin thrown in, it would have been far more enjoyable.

Then she could have aspired to the heights of iconic literary sinning females such as Madam Bovary or Scarlet O'Hara.

All in all a piece of pulp fiction melodrama made for some enjoyable not much mental engagement on a rainy day.

Mind you I'm not going to rush out to find 'Damage' or 'Oblivion' by the same author. I fear they would be misnomers too.

Thanks all for the amusing sideline. Now back to my bookrings.

Oh, I'm such a sucker for a bad book, and Servalan was pushing the "it's but wafer-thin, and oh so appalling..." line.

It's all your fault, Servalan.

Wow, melodrama-o-rama! The prose wasn't quite purple, but I reckon it was a fairly dark indigo.

Pixette, how can you say the first instance of sin happened on page 81? Isn't envy one of the deadly sins? And ridiculous amounts of envy!

I found Ruth a very unpleasant person to spend 2 hours of (reading) time with. She was just plain nasty, left a bad taste in my mouth. Ick.

How could I resist this one? It comes so highly recommended! At least the journal entries do...

Okay, I admit I only read 3 pages. But, I did read all the journal entries!
They were rather amusing. I particularly like TQD's Monty Python quote.

I had originally planned to send this book off to England with a few others, but a bookbag has landed, and I needed to add something. Actually, it is an Erotica bookbag, but I am not willing to part with my Nin books yet, and my Henry Miller books I loaned to a friend.
So, I've been scouring the shelves here at home for anything that is remotely saucey and can be released.

Servalan says that the sins don't kick in until page 81 (which is one of the three pages I read - oooouh! she licked the shoe!), but it will have to do.

Good luck to the next person who happens upon this book.

RELEASE NOTES:

Off in Unbalanced's Erotica bookbag.

I started to skim this (I loved the movie "Damage", haven't read the book) and ended up reading most of it in one sitting last night. A short, well-crafted novel of envy and resentment, with some incidental lust and a horrible, inevitable disaster in the middle which IMO quite justifies the term 'tragedy'.

It was a little out of place in the Erotica bookbag, but as I read the journal entries above I see the book has quite a story of its own to tell.

FWIW I didn't think this was quite as trashy as everyone else seems to; but yes the misattributed poetry quotes are a bit rich.

Jubby -- how did page 81 get to be one of the "first three" pages? First three when pages are ranked by cheesiness?

Page 81 was my influence I'm afraid. I was anxiously awaiting some sin to occur and this is where the adultery began.

I've since been reminded by TQD that envy is a sin and pretty well occurs from page one.

Doh! I was concentrating on the mortal sins rather than the venal. Where did I leave Moses' tablets of stone again.

Glad to see our friendly little book is touring with the erotic bookbag.

I'll be sending it on its way to its new recipient.

I thought people who appreciate Sin would also appreciate these extracts.
They're supposed to be the worst examples of erotic scenes in literature.
I've seen worse, but I'm not telling where :-)

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1959812,00.html

RELEASE NOTES:

re-releasing so it appears with the other books on the 'go hunting' page (which is where I looked for it before I remembered I had a link on my own bookshelf).

Well. Its back with me, thanks to Xoddam putting it in my Adults bookbag.

Now I've got to re release it again. But I do know that that this book has been all around Australia - Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin, and Perth , so this book is travelling rather well.

May your next journey be even further

Sorry, I have to disclaim that one. Though I did do the 'release' so the book showed up on 'go hunting', it was not I who first put Sin into the bag. For that I'll have to incriminate my friend jubby, who passed the bag on to me.

Ah, my humblest apologies Xoddam. I read that you sinned not, but that Jubby was the sinful one.