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Storyline and first chapter>
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THE STILLEST DAY
Storyline
Bethesda Barnet is an artist and a teacher. Her village
life with an invalid mother is almost ritualistically ordered and
calm - 'One foot before the other, quietly tapping out the years.'
Until one day the sudden vision of a man's face sears itself onto
her mind's eye, an imprint of sensual, hypnotic power. She begins
to paint fragmented images of Mathew Pearson, secretly and obsessively.
But Mathew Pearson has a wife, a small, laughing, pregnant creature,
whom Bethesda's mother befriends.
On the stillest day, in an extreme moment, Bethesda performs and act so bold and violent that it shatters all their lives. For thinking she can play God she falls from grace, and is sacrificed on the twin altars of convention and vengeance.
The Stillest Day is an exquisitely taut and shocking novel
about a young woman at the turn of the century who transgressed -
both in life and in art - the limits set down for her. Josephine Hart's
powerful and daring novel draws the reader right into the dark heart
of a passionate psyche.
Chapter 1
This is the history of the first year. It does not presage the
last. I feel no guilt nor did I ever. And, though this surprises me,
I had no pity.
Nothing in my past could have prepared me for what it is that I became.
Nor for the moment when suddenly I was called upon to act and to bear
witness to the very edge of my capabilities and almost beyond.
For nearly thirty years I lived a life of piety and duty. A life which
rested upon the twin pillars of my vocation, art teacher, and my filial
duty, that of loving daughter to my invalid widowed mother.
And so from the age of reason, which I believed to be seven, until
my thirtieth year, I laid one foot before the other in a circular
journey from home to school to home in my village world. One foot
before the other quietly tapping out the years.
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