Constance

by Patrick McGrath

Sidney Klein is a professor of poetry, a single father with a poor marital record, when he encounters the young, enigmatic Constance Schuyler at a literary party in 1960s Manhattan. A few weeks later, he proposes marriage, and Constance accepts, moving into his dark, book-filled apartment. But the bride is unhappy, tormented by a bitter past. She has a troubled relationship with her father, a retired doctor upstate, and is desperate for the emotional security Sidney can't fully provide. Perhaps she's made a mistake in marrying him. And then comes a devastating revelation, further jeopardizing the relationship. Sidney can only watch and wait, doubting his own moral strength, as Constance becomes reckless and self-destructive, unhelped by the arrival of her dissolute younger sister. But Constance has formed an unlikely alliance with her small stepson, and he may be the only one who can help them now. Constance is the story of one family, haunted by a trauma kept secret for decades. It is also the portrait of a marriage under threat, and the allegiance and the courage that can lead us to the light.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Gothic, Novels, 21st Century, British Literature

240 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Patrick McGrath was born in London and grew up near Broadmoor Hospital where his father was Medical Superintendent. He was educated at Stonyhurst College. He is a British novelist whose work has been categorized as gothic fiction. He is married to actress Maria Aitken and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

remember when happy meals at mcdonald's used to come with a little sack of cookies and a little cup of pop?? and now they come with, like, milk and apples?? am i wrong for wishing things could stay the same?? could stay reliable??

because the two things we are supposed to be able to count on when we read patrick mcgrath are:

gothic sensibilities

the unreliable narrator

and this one has zero of either. where is my cooky?

this "lack" doesn't make it bad, but i have been schooled, pavlovian-style, to be attuned to certain cues when reading mcgrath. and i dutifully sniffed for them, only to be rebuffed and deflated at every turn. and he had the gall to set up both of my expectations, without actually following through with them:

both sidney and constance are given a voice in this novel, the opportunity to distill their marriage and their responses, from both sides of their situation. so i was expecting to catch one or the other out in the alternating chapters - to figure out which one was going to be my pony and which was going to turn out to be the big fat liar. but, no.

and constance was raised in a crumbling old house with a mother who died young and a father whom she tried to please, but never could. so i was expecting it to "turn" at any moment, to reveal deep dark secrets.

and there definitely are, but they are less sinister than his previous books. and i know someone is going to read this and comment that part of the secret is, indeed, very sinister, but i am resolute. it's bad, yes. it is not something i would advocate, but its treatment here is not as spookytime evil as i was expecting. this is no spider.

it is more of a psychological novel, about two damaged characters who try to remake themselves through marriage; through attempting to re-cast their partner in a role for which they are unsuited. constance is trying to find a new daddy, and sidney is trying to wash off the taint of two failed marriages and "fix" the closed-off constance from her childhood neglect and responsibility.

this is, i guess, a more mature patrick mcgrath. a more tender story, raw and emotional, with none of the yanking away of the rug from underfoot. there is some rug-rumpling, yes, but no great yank.

and it's fine, and if this is your first dance with mcgrath, you will probably like it more than i did.
but i have read 6 of his 8 novels, and expectations are powerful things, indeed...

it opens, promisingly, with an epigraph from sylvia plath, from the only poem of hers i really like:

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you,
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

and it leads from there.

it takes place in manhattan when penn station was just starting to be torn down, so somewhere between 1963-5. this serves as a backdrop for the story of constance and her husband sidney. constance takes comfort in the destruction of the past

...I got a kind of satisfaction from seeing a whole section of the city disappearing as though it had been H-bombed...They were turning it into a ruin. I liked ruins. I'd grown up in one, of course. Sweep away the old stuff, this was my feeling. Start over! Build it new!

while sidney calls it "a staggering act of vandalism"

Forgive me. I feel about architecture as I do about marriage. What was done to Penn Station was wanton. I hate to see a thing destroyed before its time.

and you can see right there that this difference of opinion w/r/t architecture is indicative of these two strong personalities and their inability to be who the other wants them to be.

it is about a woman who is hiding out in her own marriage - lonely and pale in the shadow of her sister; a sloppy drunken ...romantic. or, in the book's description, a messy beatnik floozie.

She possessed what he called a robust personality. He said she had messy vitality. He meant she was loud and had appetites, and by this he meant she's acquired a taste for liquor, also for men. She attracted older men and didn't care if they were married or not. This I knew because when installed in some cellar bar in Greenwich Village, where she really felt at home, over copious cocktails she liked nothing better than to tell me about her sex life.

constance at once envies and pities her sister. constance also has a strong personality, but hers is more brittle, more bitter, and her damage has caused her to have not only daddy and sexual issues, but guilt and obsession and the shadow-notes of hysteria and hallucinations and paranoia.

and sidney wants to fix her like a project.

I was patient. I was careful. She came to depend on me. Time spent with me was nourishing, and it was the kind of nourishment she required... I offered water, in effect, to a child dying of thirst, although she didn't see it that way at the time.

which could, i suppose, be the foundation for a successful marriage, if every couple lived in a vacuum and nothing ever changed. but in this marriage, it is going to cause problems. things will not run smoothly, and there might be a thrown plate or two.

so, overall, it is not my favorite mcgrath, but if i had myself read it in a vacuum, without knowing who had written it, i think i would have been more receptive to its charms.

you be the judge.

come to my blog!

[Kinga · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hi Patrick McGrath, thanks for phoning this foetus of a novel in!

Was this written on a napkin during a barbecue on a long weekend? Because this is what it felt like. There was a good idea or two in it, but everything, including the writing, felt so stunted.
My friend suggested that maybe ‘Constance’ is a satire on Freudian case studies. This was a very interesting and charitable interpretation but I think this book takes itself way too seriously to be a satire or pastiche of anything.

What do we have there? A young woman with ‘daddy issues’ who marries an older guy. There are quite obvious secrets to be revealed and so much melodrama it could be enough for at least 30 episodes of Jersey Shore. The perspective changes from Constance to her husband but God knows why, because Constance has absolutely nothing to reveal about her feelings or emotions. It seems like the author believes that women are such mysterious, esoteric creatures that they are in fact a mystery to themselves. Her narrative voice was childlike (despite the fact, she was supposed to be an editor, so should be fairly eloquent) and it was a grand mess with only one clear message ‘I hate Daddy! Why didn’t he love me?’

On the other hand, the husband changes between mansplaining Constance’s emotions and her ‘psyche’ to the reader and telling us she is impenetrable and he can’t understand her.
It is not that the characters were unlikeable, as I don’t have any problem with that - I’m not reading books to make friends (and if you do, then I suggest you go out more). The issue was that the characters were incongruous, they didn’t make sense most of the time. They were affected by things that shouldn’t affect them, and ignored the things that should really make an impact on them.

The plot was also all over the place, as if the author forgot that things in books should happen for a reason. If you make something happen, there should be some aftermath. In ‘Constance’ too many things happened and too few of them had any consequence.
I gave the book two stars because there were a few ideas that could be good if they were developed properly, and there were a few scenes that felt powerful and were in fact wasted on this mediocre at best novel. I’m not giving up on Patrick McGrath yet because some people promised me that he has written way better books than this potboiler.

[Michela De Bartolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siamo sempre vittime della nostra infanzia?? Oppure possiamo scegliere il nostro destino ? Questo è quello che ha scaraventato Constance in un turbine di rimorsi . La sua infanzia percorsa a cercare l’amore del “babbo “ , la morte della madre , il crescere e prendersi cura della sorella Iris . Una serie di eventi negativi , fino alla confessione del padre . Un uomo accanto che la ama , un figlio acquisito , riusciranno a darle l’amore osannato ?? Ma chi cerca amore è anche in grado di donarlo ?? McGrath la sua scrittura mi rapisce e così resto anch’io vittima delle sue storie di intrecci parentali .

[Simona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il titolo di questo romanzo di McGrath è perfetto per descrivere il senso di estraneità di una donna nei confronti degli altri, ma soprattutto di se stessa.
L'estranea, Constance, si trova a dover fare i conti con una verità e un passato a lei sconosciuto che sconvolgerà i suoi equilibri e la sua vita, già abbastanza precaria.
Ciò che colpisce maggiormente è la capacità, la bravura di McGrath di scandagliare l'animo umano e con esso, tutte le nevrosi, i dubbi, le psicosi dei personaggi.
Con un linguaggio asciutto e frasi brevi, ma essenziali, quasi chirurgiche, McGrath guida il lettore nella testa di questa donna che nasconde qualcosa di imperscrutabile a cui è diffficile accedere, trascinando il lettore in quell'abisso e in quel confine labile tra un pizzico di normalità e una sana follia.

[Sarinys · Rating 2 out of 5]

La narrazione alterna due punti di vista contrapposti, quelli della protagonista Constance e del suo borioso marito. Lui è convinto che lei sia una nevrotica senza speranza, lei pensa che il proprio padre sia la causa di tutti i mali e che il marito ne sia una replica soffocante. Tutto sommato non c’è altro.

La protagonista è abbastanza simpatica, insofferente per partito preso, un po’ punk. Non è chiaro se l’autore abbia inserito il punto di vista esterno, focalizzato sul marito, pensando di oggettivare le informazioni; senza dubbio è riuscito a creare un personaggio abbastanza irritante da giustificare il perenne fastidio di lei. La storia è priva di riferimenti temporali, ambientata a New York ma in una dimensione irreale, come una favola inquietante. Purtroppo è tutto qua, e raggiunta la metà il romanzo ha già dato tutto quello che aveva da offrire. Si trascina alla conclusione perdendosi in inutili tramacci familiari che rovinano l’atmosfera misteriosa costruita nella prima parte.

[Megan L (Iwanttoreadallthebooks) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was pretty terrible. I'm being generous with my 2 star rating.

[Jukebook_juliet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inhalt:
Eine rätselhafte Aura umgibt die schmale junge Frau, der Sidney bei einer Buchpräsentation in New York begegnet. Constance zieht ihn erotisch an und weckt seinen Beschützerinstinkt. Dass sie unter einem Trauma leidet, lässt ihn nicht unberührt. Wo bleiben echte Nähe und Liebe in ihrer Ehe, frei von Verdächtigung und Rollenzwang? In zarten Momenten deutet sich so etwas an.

Meine Meinung:
Was ich erwartet hatte: Knisternde Spannung & Leidenschaft eines Paares vor dem Hintergrund eines geschäftigen NYC.
Was ich bekommen habe: Das psychologische Profil einer tief gestörten Frau, die sich seit der Kindheit ungewollt fühlt.
Versteh’ mich nicht falsch, denn ich habe das Buch sehr gerne gelesen. Auch wenn ich das Verhalten von Constance teilweise überhaupt nicht nachempfinden konnte, machte mich ihre Verletzlichkeit nachdenklich und irgendwie faszinierte sie mich auch. In diesem Buch kann man ganz deutlich erkennen, was passiert, wenn in der Kindheit viel schiefgeht und Kindern der nötige Halt fehlt. Denn auch diese Kinder werden zu Erwachsenen, die in der Welt klarkommen müssen.
Für mein Empfinden hat der Autor Patrick McGrath den Ehemann zu sehr in die Ecke des armen Mannes gedrängt, der es mit „so einer Ehefrau aushalten muss“. Hätte man im Hinblick auf die psychologischen Probleme von Constance anders (sensibler) mit umgehen können.

Fazit:
Für mich eine klare Leseempfehlung für alle, die sich mit dem Thema psychologische Probleme in fiktiven Romanen beschäftigen möchten.

Meine Bewertung:
4/5 Sterne 🌟

[Rupert Dreyfus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a massive McGrath fan and only have one more of his books to read unless he writes something else. However, I can understand why this book has taken a bit of a drubbing. While the writing is great, it does seem a little padded out which became frustrating at times. There was too much needless description of the characters actions for one thing. In my opinion it would've worked better as a novella.

All that said; I found the story really engaging and I always appreciate stories where the horror stays within the laws of nature which is what McGrath has mastered. The atmosphere was haunting and I felt fully immersed in New York circa the late '60s, early '70s. I felt a lot of empathy towards Constance and thought that the switch of perspectives between the two lovers gave the story a deeper sense of mystery.

I won't recommend this to people unless you've already read a lot of McGrath books. I would say to anyone who hasn't ever read a Patrick McGrath story: start with his earlier stories which are based in England. These are The Grotesque, Spider, Asylum and Dr Haggard's Disease. This will probably make you appreciate his stories which are based in New York. These came later; I think he moved there in the '80s and for the last 10 years has based his stories mostly in New York.

[Ugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book club pick - although, full disclosure: I voted for this one.

A lot happens in Constance, so I can't complain about a lack of plot, but somehow it's nevertheless lacking in substance. You have to feel something for a character before you give a shit what happens to them or how they act, and I didn't feel for these characters at all.

The most involving event in the book is an act of sodomy - literally, not my metaphor - but it feels thrown in for effect, and therefore loses its impact.

I can't work out what the book is attempting to achieve. I almost believed for a moment it could be read as an allegory of modernity and modern character, but that just doesn't hold water.

There's also barely a surprising word or arresting sentence between the covers. Of the two decent instances, one is immediately undone by the sentence that follows:

'The heat wave lay on the city like an incubus made of steam. I looked the word up: ...'

In the end I think it's just more fiction written to pay the bills. And we need no more of that.

[Giulietta · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. L'avevo comprato in sconto alla Giunti col 70%, ma ora penso di capire come mai non vedessero l'ora di levarselo dagli scaffali. Peccato, perché ho letto McGrath durante la mia adolescenza e ne avevo un bel ricordo.

I personaggi mi paiono due deficienti. Ma dài, veramente sposarti con una donna "fragile" con vent'anni meno di te, e che conosci da poco più di un mese, non è poi questa grandiosa idea? E in nome di quale dio del masochismo decidi di prostrarti ad ogni sua follia e ridicola insinuazione? Per l'amor del Cielo. Non solo sono uno più scemo dell'altra, ma sono anche poco credibili. Improbabili pillole freudiane e di psicologia spicciola gettate qua e là, come una pioggia miracolosa ad un rave party.
Nota di demerito per lo stile di scrittura telegrafico che non mi consente di dare un'ambientazione decente in cui i due si muovano.

[Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overwrought psychosexual drama in 1960's Manhattan sounds like a lot of fun, but somehow wasn't. Not that it's bad by any means, but I expected more. It's a feverish dissection of a bad marriage between an older professor and a young woman. Sidney and Constance are equally fucked-up, although Sidney doesn't realize it. Her blatant Daddy issues kind of overshadow his own hang-ups. Deep dark family secrets are hinted at, but when they are finally revealed the effect isn't shocking, exactly. So Constance has a dysfunctional family? Whose members lie and keep secrets? Who doesn't? I'd be much more interested in reading a sequel about Howard, Sidney's son from a previous marriage. The poor kid will grow up to be magnificently maladjusted and make some lucky woman a wretched husband.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title character is constant in only one thing; her enduring bitterness at 'Daddy's' neglect of her and his obvious preference for her younger sister. It seems an odd choice that this cold, resentful woman would marry a man 20 years her senior. He wants to rescue her. She doesn't want to be rescued. The marriage is a textbook folie a deux, worsened by family secrets and tragedies...

To me, this novel seemed like McGrath was taking notes, to be fully fleshed out later. I was hoping for the hypnotic gradations of madness and obsession that I so loved in "Asylum" and "Spider".

[NancyKay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only finished this to see if somehow it would pull a rabbit out of the hat. Otherwise I couldn't figure why I was going on reading it at all -- the whole thing was curiously flat, and seemed more than anything like a treatment for an early 1970s TV daytime soap, with the actions sketched in but the actual characterizations to come later. So there was a lot of emotional hoo-hah -- so much that it was cartoonish -- but the characters were such vague wraiths that I couldn't care.

[Lia Valenti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Libro contorto ,noioso e claustrofobico.
Mai letto niente di cosi lento,da tagliarsi le vene ,come si dice dalle mie parti se ci si annoia.
Niente a che vedere con Follia o Spider che ho letto in un battibaleno.
Non l'ho abbandonato nella speraza che si ripigliasse e desse un po' di vita a tutti i personaggi,speranza vana.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

An insipid and quite dull psychological melodrama. None of the characters are particularly believable, and the story rarely engages you. After such great novels as Spider, Asylum and Martha Peake, Mcgrath's last 3 books suggest he has reached the nadir of his career.

[Helenpeluso903msn.com · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful.....just awful.

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overwrought, too much angst.

[Martie Nees Record · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Freudian, gothic wannabe.

[Antigone · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is what life must be like for the overly-analyzed; there are no human beings in it, just rats caught in a particularly brutal Freudian maze.

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hated this. No plot, unsympathetic and unbelievable characters.

[Mighty Aphrodite · Rating 4 out of 5]

La scrittura di McGrath disorienta ed esplode sotto gli occhi del lettore come una mina sepolta da tempo ormai dimenticata e sulla quale qualcuno ha disgraziatamente poggiato il piede. Il lettore non ha neanche il tempo di prendere un respiro profondo prima di immergersi nel mondo di McGrath, perché la storia inizia quasi di corsa, quando il destino dei suoi protagonisti sembra già essere stato scritto molto tempo prima.

Lo scrittore inglese de “L’estranea” decide di lasciare la narrazione nelle mani di Sidney e Constance, una coppia di sposi novelli che si ritrova quasi accidentalmente a condividere l’esistenza in un buio e freddo appartamento di New York.

Il lettore, dunque, prima spalanca gli occhi insieme a Constance e al suo sguardo irrequieto e si lascia trascinare nel vortice inarrestabile della sua anima nervosa; poi partecipa ai tentativi paternalistici e noiosi di Sidney di ricondurre tutto all’ordine e alla razionalità, all’interno di una realtà nella quale nulla di ciò che accade possa mai essere colpa sua.

Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...

[☕Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 5
Story: 4
Characters: 5
Emotional impact: 4
Overall rating: 4.5

[Emy Ives · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patrick McGrath è sinonimo di garanzia per me. Una storia di una lucidità e crudezza spaventosa, sono riuscita ad odiare Costance con tutte le mie viscere, e il finale mi ha spiazzata come nessun altro... di un'intensità disarmante..

[Bree T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Constance grew up in a Victorian house, a somewhat miserable childhood that became even more so upon the death of her mother when she was 12. It fell to Constance to be a mother to her younger sister Iris, the apple of their father’s eye. Constance always felt as though she received nothing but hostility from her distant father and her memories of him and feelings about him are very different to what Iris has.

Now adults, Constance lives in New York and works in publishing. She meets Sidney, a professor with tenure at a University and marries him, her idea of trading one father figure for another, except with this one, she believes she will receive all the love and affection she didn’t get as a child. Iris is now a bit of a lush, working in a hotel near the Bowery and Constance still hasn’t lost that mothering instinct when it comes to her sister, who is involved with a man that is clearly married and whom Constance knows will only hurt and disappoint her.

At first Sidney and Constance live their life in relative isolation from others – but then Constance’s father grows ill, possibly having had a stroke and Sidney’s ex-wife also becomes ill which means that Sidney’s child from that marriage begins to spend more and more time with them. Constance had never wanted to play a role in his life – he had a mother and she wasn’t interested in repeating the past and once again assuming responsibility for someone else’s child. But she finds herself drawn to the thin, quiet, smart Howard. However her life is shattered when her father drops a bombshell on her, his attempts to ‘make things right’ splintering Constance’s fragile grip on her existence and idea of who she is even further.

I own several Patrick McGrath novels – they sit patiently on my TBR shelf, waiting for me. When I received this one for review, I was glad that it would give me the extra push I needed to dive in and try a writer that I’ve been curious about. Constance is his most recent novel, set in 1960′s Manhattan, the story of a family and the shifting relationships and tragedy contained within it.

The novel is told from both Constance’s and Sidney’s point of view and these are not always the same. Constance is somewhat fragile, a brittle character who is much wrapped up in her perceived alienation by her father. She remembers her childhood in a very definite way, she remembers little love and affection, barely any interaction from her father, an austere doctor now retired. Her sister Iris remembers things differently – she has no trouble communicating with their father and she finds him easy to love and feels loved in return. Although Constance and Iris are close in some ways, in others they are worlds apart. Constance values success – she wants to go far in publishing, she wants to do something, be something, to wipe out the feelings she has of failure that carry over from her childhood. Iris could study to be a doctor but instead works in a hotel, falling into affairs with unsuitable men and drinking too much. She’s passionate, concerned little with success. She feels deeply and when her lover breaks it off with her, she seems quite sure that she won’t survive the loss. Constance, who doesn’t seem to be blessed with much feeling or compassion, despite her craving to be loved, is mostly dismissive of Iris.

We get Sidney’s view of how he and Constance met and his feelings for her both when they married and after. Although significantly older than her, Sidney seemed good for Constance – or he could’ve been, should she chosen to have allowed him to be. Instead she seemed to fixed on her ‘Daddy’ issues, too determined to make Sidney something he wasn’t or see him as something he wasn’t. She accuses him of being against her when her paranoia about her father seems to be escalating and she is quite often dismissive of him. Despite the way that she treats him, Sidney remains steadfastly loyal to her, even in the face of betrayal.

This is an interesting book, one where my feelings for it are not easy to articulate, even to myself. I didn’t like Constance, but at times I felt for her. I think it’s very hard to be so ruled by your ideas of your existence that when these are shaken, there’s no where left to go but down. At times I felt for her, at times I couldn’t see the necessity for the emotional drama. So much of herself was tied up in one man, love and hate that she didn’t really know how to feel. When he became ill, she insisted upon nursing him, even then it seemed, unwilling to let go of the hold he had on her life. The thing that redeemed Constance a little for me, was the way she came to care for Sidney’s son, Howard. It seems she wasn’t going to repeat past mistakes by parental figures in her life and make other children miserable. It takes guts to be able to make that decision, even more so to stick with it.

[Rosaria Battiloro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Caro Patrick McGrath, proprio noi che ci eravamo tanto amati, come siamo potuti arrivare a questo? Sono lontane ormai la perfezione e la morbosa, oscura, bellezza dei vari "Follia" , "Spider " e "Haggard". "L'estranea" é un romanzo che sembra nascere giá stanco, nonostante un'idea di base non priva di potenziale, e per questo destinato a trascinarsi piatto per tutta la sua lunghezza. Pochi sussulti, tutti piú o meno prevedibili, tutti piú o meno giá visti. Personaggi, principalmente la protagonista e suo marito, che risultano irritanti ed inverosimili nelle loro caratterizzazioni. L'ambientazione - sia quella della casa dalle ombre gotiche, che quella della New York in trasformazione urbanistica - che sembrerebbe dover ricoprire un ruolo importante e simbolico, è invece tracciata solo superficialmente, e certo non giova allo svolgersi della trama la narrazione dal doppio punto di vista che porta, soprattutto nella prima metá del romanzo, ad una non necessaria e confusa ripetizione di eventi.
Tutto è fiacco, spento, polveroso, ed il finale anticlimatico mi è sembrato fastidioso ed affrettato.

[Sub_zero · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

La idea previa que me había hecho de 'Constance' es completamente opuesta a lo que he acabado encontrándome en el interior de la última novela escrita por Patrick McGrath, pero lo cierto es que esa distancia a veces insalvable entre expectativa y realidad no siempre tiene que ser mala. De hecho, al final he disfrutado bastante con este relato desquiciante y obsesivo de una mujer fatal que no parece capaz de superar sus traumas familiares y acaba trasladándolos a su actual matrimonio con un hombre que no deja de acumular fracasos con el sexo femenino. La sombra de una infancia infeliz, unas dificultosas relaciones parentales y un secreto que amenaza con destruir la estabilidad emocional de Constance se combinan a la perfección para entretejer un atractivo drama psicológico, oscuro, enfermizo y con una espectacular labor de ambientación (Nueva York, años 60, decadencia urbanística), pero que resulta un tanto irregular en su desarrollo. Aun así, la considero una lectura bastante recomendable.

[Arianna Ciancaleoni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lo scorso anno avevo letto "Follia" di Patrick McGrath: un libro bellissimo. Se dovessi fare una classifica, rientra di diritto nei miei primi cinque preferiti in assoluto. Per cui, anche attratta dal fatto che fosse in saldo alla Giunti ho letto "L'estranea" e l'ho trovato francamente illeggibile. Alla fine, lo ammetto, ho saltato qualche pagina. Non capisco se è un problema di traduzione o se proprio questo libro l'autore non avesse voglia di scriverlo. La trama, in breve: Constance ha avuto un'infanzia tremenda, segnata dal padre che le ha sempre preferito la sorella. Questo le ha distrutto la vita e i rapporti con tutte le altre persone, della sua famiglia e non solo. Un dramma senza fine che però non mi ha dato nessuna emozione. Mi dispiace moltissimo, ma così è.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short and sweet version is this: Loved the writing, especially the atmosphere created by the author, I didn't trust the characters, and waited for a payoff that just didn't materialize. It's tough to encapsulate what I think about this book in a brief paragraph, so I'll direct your attention to my post about this book at my online reading journal.

[Steve Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Constance by Patrick McGrath

This is a period novel. It is an odd period. It is set in NYC in the early 1960s. Penn Station is being torn down. This fact becomes a sort of metaphor for social institutions decaying and being torn down. The enormous monumental train station that seemed so permanent, and perhaps should have been, is coming down and it is a slow painful dirty process. This is not the “swinging ‘60s” this is the prefeminist, echos of the 1950s, 1960s. And the city is changing demographically which upsets the white conservative character in the novel.

This is the story of a marriage between a twice previously married older professor/writer and a young woman, new in town and an editor.
The writer is working on a book he is calling The Coservative Heart. The novel doesn’t state the point of view of this work or anything else about it other than that the character Sidney, the British man living in New York writing it, is having a hard time with it.

He meets young Constance at a book party on Sutton Place. It is love at first sight. He wants to be with her and somehow can detect her loneliness and damage.

The story is told in two voices, there are chapters in Sidney’s voice and others in the voice of Constance.

The feel of the novel is dark gothic in the settings of her ramshackle, in disrepair, family house upstate along the Hudson River and in Sidney's enormous dark upper west side apartment. The house has been in the troubled family for a couple of generations. Constance’s grandfather built out a smaller house with ostentatious towers. She has lived there with her distant father and her younger sister who she had to mother after their mother’s early death.

There are murky dark secrets up there that had traumatized Constance and her sister and maybe her unfeeling doctor father. All these secrets are revealed in the course of the novel.
Sidney has trouble finding his way through the morass of Constance’s family mess, often seeing and taking the father’s point of view without enough information to justify that and to the added distress of Constance. Part of the gothic bind for Constance is that she is trapped between these to patriarcal older men, her elderly father and her new husband 20 some years older than she is.

It is a dark, interesting drama of family and a marriage relationship.
McGrath has a way of making an America Gothic melodrama, out of ordinary life, that is convincing and disturbing.

[Sawa Da · Rating 2 out of 5]

Das Cover passt sehr gut zu diesem Roman. Der Autor Patrick McGrath lässt vituriös im Wechsel Constance und Sidney erzählen. Man erfährt ihre gegenseitige Wahrnehmungen und die dramatischen Ereignisse in Constances Familie.
Constance ist eine „Eiskönigin“, die „Papa-Probleme“ hat und versucht diese durch ihre Ehe mit Sydney zu lösen. Constance geht die Ehe ein, ohne darüber nachzudenken, welche Vorspeise sie in einem Restaurant bestellen sollte, und erlebte dann den sogenannten Wiederholungszwang, als die ungelösten Probleme mit ihrem Vater in ihrer Beziehung zu Sydney auftauchen. Sydney scheint der fürsorglichere der beiden zu sein, aber seine Fürsorge grenzt an ein Bedürfnis nach Kontrolle, und er erstickt Constance ständig und erschafft eine Welt, aus der sie immer fliehen wollte. Die wenige Geschichte wird abwechselnd von Constance und Sydney erzählt. Im Laufe der Entwicklung fühlt sich der Roman immer mehr wie ein Raum an, aus dem man einfach gehen möchte. .! Warum uns mit der Mikroanalyse dieser zwei sehr unsympathischen (und - schlimmer noch - uninteressanten) Charaktere belasten,
die nur Gedankenspiele miteinander spielen und/oder versuchen, die Oberhand zu gewinnen? Auch das Ende ist sehr unbefriedigend. Nichts löst sich auf und man ist nicht klüger, auch wenn man den größten Teil von 200 Seiten über diese beiden unangenehmen Protagonisten gelesen hat. Es gibt nichts zu lernen und – schlimmer noch – der Roman unterhält nicht einmal.