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From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, a dazzling and audacious new book that extends the storyline of Isabel Archer, the heroine of Henry Adam' The Family portrait of a Female, into unpredicted territory. Isabel Archer is a young American girl swept off to Europe in the past due 19th century by an aunt who dreams to round out the impetuous but naïve girl's connection with the earth. When Isabel makes a large, unpredicted inheritance, she is finagled into a married relationship with the wonderful, penniless, and - as Isabel realizes too past due - cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond, whose link with a certain Madame Merle is suspiciously seductive. On a trip to England to go to her cousin Ralph Touchett on his deathbed, Isabel emerges a chance to free herself from the relationship but nonetheless selects to return to Italy. Banville uses James' story brand up to now, but Mrs. Osmond is carefully Banville's own: the narrative inventiveness; the lyrical accuracy and wonder of his terms; the levels of emotional and psychological depth; the understated, dark humor. And when Isabel will come in Italy - along with someone else! - the book takes off in directions that Adam himself would be delighted to follow.
