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Book, 2017
Current format, Book, 2017, First American edition., Available .
Book, 2017
Current format, Book, 2017, First American edition., Available . Offered in 0 more formats
John Banville's novel Mrs. Osmond extends the story of Isabel Archer, the heroine of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady. Isabel Archer is a young American woman, swept off to Europe in the late nineteenth century by an aunt who hopes to round out the impetuous but naive girl's experience of the world. When Isabel comes into a large, unexpected inheritance, she is finagled into a marriage with the charming, penniless, and--as Isabel finds out too late--cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond, whose connection to a certain Madame Merle is suspiciously intimate. On a trip to England to visit her cousin Ralph Touchett on his deathbed, Isabel is offered a chance to free herself from the marriage, but nonetheless chooses to return to Italy. Mrs. Osmond takes up James's story at this point and follows a narrative of its own, enhanced by layers of emotional and psychological intensity and subtle, dark humor.
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