Sleep, Pale sister by Joanne Harris
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Rating: 3/5
Genre: Historical fiction, Ghost story, Gothic
Post Book Thoughts: hmm… interesting. BUT! Is anyone going to put me out of my misery and help me with that ending?!
Originally published in 1994 — and never before available in the United States — Sleep, Pale Sister is a hypnotically atmospheric story set in nineteenth century London. When puritanical artist Henry Chester sees delicate child beauty Effie, he makes her his favorite model and, before long, his bride. But Henry, volatile and repressed, is in love with an ideal. Passive, docile, and asexual, the woman he projects onto Effie is far from the woman she really is. And when Effie begins to discover the murderous depths of Henry’s hypocrisy, her latent passion will rise to the surface.
Sleep, Pale Sister combines the ethereal beauty of a Pre-Raphaelite painting with a chilling high gothic tale and is a testament to Harris’s brimming cornucopia of talents.