Strange Music

Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 longlist

In Laura Fish's ambitious and captivating novel, three very different women struggle for freedom. While Elizabeth Barrett Browning is confined to bed, chafing against the restriction of her doctors and writing poetry and fretful letters, at her family's Jamaican estate Kaydia, the Creole housekeeper tries to protect her daughter from their predatory master and a recently freed black slave, Sheba, mourns the loss of her lover. As Elizabeth, a passionate abolitionist, struggles to come to terms with the source of her wealth and privilege both Sheba and Kydia fight to escape a tragic past which seems ever present. The resulting novel is an extraordinary evocation of the dark side of the nineteenth-century that is both horrifying and ultimately redeeming.

Featured in the August 2009 Teen Reads newsletter.
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