A Terrible Beauty
Penguin Books, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86826-4
A Terrible Beauty: Jacket copy
“Will you give me your blood to drink, even though you die of it?”
A past betrayal returns to haunt Simon Donovan, a frail and dying scholar of
antiquities, when the woman he wronged summons him to come to her secluded
northern home. To spare his father, Matthew Donovan, a struggling painter,
undertakes the journey, not knowing that it will take him into the remote
reaches of the wilderness and the darkest regions of his heart.
In a fantastic mansion, Matthew meets the mysterious
Sidonie Moreau, whose secrets run deeper than the ancient mountains that
surround them. Simultaneously
fascinated and disturbed by her, he tries to discover what she hides ... and
what she wants from him.
Then in one night of terrible revelation, he learns the
answer -- nothing less than his life’s blood, yielded willingly.
She promises that he will not be harmed, that he is free to do as he
pleases, but every night she will ask for his blood and he must answer.
Trapped by the vast wilderness around them, Matthew has no choice but to
submit to her terms. Every day, he
struggles to exorcise the nightmares that haunt him, giving them form and colour
on his canvas. Every night, he must
once again face his immortal captor.
He vows that he will never surrender to her.
But as the nights pass, he comes to realise that there are things more
dangerous than her inhuman appearance and deadly need.
There is the sorrow in her eyes, the strange curve of her smile, and her
complex, compelling charm. There are
the secrets submerged deep in his own heart.
Soon he knows that the unthinkable is possible; that one night, tempted
by desire and despair, he might say yes
...
In an extraordinary reworking of one of the most beloved
and popular fairy tales of all time, the acclaimed author of The
Night Inside and Blood and Chrysanthemums creates
a stunning new mythology, a heart-stopping tale of suspense, and an
unforgettably beautiful love story.
“He did not know if he could hammer a stake into her heart.
He did not want to find out for certain that he could not.”
-- written by NB
A Terrible Beauty:
Publication History
Canada: Trade Paperback, 1996
Paperback,
1997
Germany: Paperback, Der
Vamp, Ullstein, 1997
A Terrible Beauty: Reviews
(selected and edited by the author.
As an aside, almost all female reviewers of this book understood exactly
what the source fairy tale was – almost none of the male reviewers recognized
it.)
“A polished and enchanting tale… It is, in a word, breathtaking.”
The Ottawa Citizen
“Baker’s prose is lush and sensual…she has a real
gift for making the fantastic seem plausible and investing the mundane with
eerie significance.”
The Sunday Sun (Toronto)
“A Terrible Beauty is modern Canadian Gothic … Nancy
Baker shows her mastery of the form – the mysterious letter, the journey into
the wilderness, the shadows that hide from the flickering firelight – and her
real affection for a good ol’ fashioned vampire yarn.”
The Telegraph Journal (Saint John)
“Baker’s narrative is seductive and compelling.
Like Rice, she transcends the horror genre.”
Province Showcase (Vancouver)
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for Disney to film this very adult and
erotic version of Beauty and the Beast.”
Winnipeg Free Press
A Terrible Beauty: Notes
I've always been fascinated by the Beauty and the Beast
story. As a child, it was my favorite fairy tale, engendering both
emotional satisfaction and a queasy sort of excitement at the dark sexuality I
could sense, even if I didn't know what it was.
In later years, the tale tied very neatly into my tendency
to want to reverse the genders in stories I wrote. My heroines tended to
near-pathological violence, my heroes to wit and compassion. I don't
remember the moment that I realized that the perfect female beast for a story
would be a vampire but I knew right away that it was exactly what I wanted to
write for my next book.
Research for this book was a great deal of fun. I
went to Casa Loma and Spadina House, two historical sites in Toronto. I
watched "America's Castles" on A & E. I looked at floor
plans of palaces all over the world. I read about the Gilded Age in New
York and the massive Long Island estates of the Vanderbilts and the
Rockefellers.
Once I decided that Matthew was a painter, I had to take an
oil painting course. I have virtually no talent for art and quickly fell
back on the classic Neil Young line, "That's my style, man", to
compensate for my inability to make bottles look like bottles.
I found all the paintings and psychology I could need in Idols
of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture, a
fascinating book by Bram Dijkstra. (It's interesting how many images from
fantasy fiction are influenced by the styles and themes found in this
book. Even knowing this background, I still find some of the paintings
beautiful and powerful.)
In determining what shape my female "beast"
should take, it seemed to me that men fear female beauty more than ugliness.
Ugly women are mocked and dismissed, made invisible in the world.
Beautiful women are desired and that desire gives them power, makes them
dangerous. Sidonie is capable of taking on many guises but her natural one
is alien, inhuman. Whether a man sees beauty or horror there is up to him.
Of my three novels, this was by far the easiest one to
write. The Night Inside took seven years, Blood and
Chrysanthemums took a year and a half, and A Terrible Beauty took 6
months.
Strangely enough, when the time came for it to be
published, I hated it. I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't want a
launch party, I was convinced it was going to be a huge failure. I was already
well into the writer's block with which I continue to struggle.
That said, I am very fond of the book now. There are
books I love and re-read over and over, usually in the bathtub. I set out
to write one of those books and I hope that somewhere out there, someone has it
on a shelf reserved for their "bathtub books".
Musical note: The soundtrack to this one was Fumbling
Towards Ecstasy by Sarah Mclachlan.
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