This book is a masterpiece. It is short and spare and written in crystal clear prose, yet so evocative that it is richer in nuance than most good novels twice its size. It is so good I could kick myself for not reading it years ago, yet so mythic I am convinced I have known it always, like a tragic folktale or a chilling childhood dream. And yet, for all its grimness, it is essentially a comedy: darkly, transcendently, funny.The Blackwood sisters—28-year-old Constance and 18-year-old Mary Katharine—live in a big old house on the outskirts of town. They are fitfully persecuted by the locals, who are convinced one of them is a murderer: their whole family—with the exception of scatterbrained Uncle Julian—was poisoned with arsenic six years ago. Now the three survivors—along with theirblack cat Jonas—are living together in deliberate tranquility, when long-lost cousin Charles arrives on their doorstep, barely concealing his interest in the lovely Constance and the Blackwood family estate.
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