FREE: The Sensualist~Barbara Hodgson

The listing, The Sensualist~Barbara Hodgson has ended.

Riding on a train to Vienna in search of her runaway husband, a Canadian art historian named Helen Martin enters a twilight world of strange hallucinations, astounding coincidences and deadly conundrums. Awakening in the middle of the night, Helen finds herself sharing a compartment with an old woman named Rosa Kovslovsky, who is somehow linked to her-so closely linked that Anna starts to believe her own body parts are being replaced by Rosa's. Then this odd companion hands her a small box full of wonders and clues, which will accompany Helen on a tour of Europe in search of much more than her missing spouse. The box contains a book on human anatomy, Jewels and notes. And, in a nice twist, the design of Barbara Hodgson's novel THE SENSUALIST incorporates all these visual aids. As readers follow Helen, we see the same images she is seeing: Illustrated plates from ancient anatomy texts, medicine vials, a pearl-studded picture frame. Like the historical works she researches, Helen's box-and Hodgson's book-provides a way of interweaving 'the significance of the words with the importance of the pictures.' Helen soon finds herself embroiled in a historical mystery as printing blocks from the works of the anatomist Vesalius seem to have resurfaced long after they were reportedly destroyed in World War II. Helen's husband was on their trail, and she quickly resumes his quest. 'The Sensualist' is a quirky and intense novel, full of weird events and oddball characters (a man who is interviewing every person in the Vienna telephone directory; a doctor who is inspired to become a train conductor when the conductor on his own train drops dead) built around an investigation of the senses. The best part is Hodgson's combination of pictures and text: as a physical object, 'The Sensualist' becomes an integral part of the plot, guiding the reader as the complex narrative unravels. -- The New York Times