The Stillest Day »

The most powerful and daring novel yet by the bestselling author of Damage, this compelling and painfully beautiful novel looks at a young woman at the turn of the century who transgresses -- both in life and art -- the limits set for her. Bethesda Barnet is an artist and a teacher. Her village life with an invalid mother is ordered and calm until the sudden vision of a man's face imprints itself on her mind's eye -- and she becomes a woman obsessed. She paints fragmented images of Mathew Pearson, secretly and relentlessly. And then, on the stillest day, in an extreme moment, she performs an act so bold that it shatters lives. Daring to play God, she falls from grace and is sacrificed on the twin altars of convention and vengeance. The Stillest Day draws the reader into the darkest corner of a passionate psyche.

Carol Peace Robins

Despite unpleasant characters. . .despite. . .overblown sentences . . .we still read on, possessed like one of Hart's own protagonists. —The New York Times Book Review