`His rain-washed face was what I first saw. It was turned to the heavens which drenched the whiteness further, so that rivulets of water ran down his white skin. And in that instant I longed to let my hair loose to dry the unknown wonder of that vision . . . " Bethesda Barnet - even her name is uncool - is a spinster and art teacher who takes care of her invalid mother and walks out, in the evenings, with a gentleman farmer. But, when Mathew Pearson arrives in the village with his pregnant wife, Bethesda is plunged headlong into passion.
Hart's strange, spare style seizes the reader with equal force as the ambiguous and horrible tale unfolds; the ending is unsatisfactory, but then perhaps it has to be.
