The Poison Heart

by Amanda Hemingway

Blamed by her father for her mother's death during childbirth, Elsa becomes obsessed with winning her father's love, but the trail of that destructive obsession is strewn with jealousy, deceit, duplicity, possible murder, self-denial, and self-blindness

Genres: Fiction

319 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1990

About the author

She has also written under the pseudonyms of Jan Siegel, and Jemma Harvey.

Reviews

[Lish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally underrated novel. The plot is pressing and enveloping. A true page turner.

[Jade F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that will surely leave many thinking. The love/hate of an unwanted child for her sister. A plot spinning around a father incapable to accept that his wife's death is not the child's fault. His hate for her and his unwillingness to even acknowledge her existence, in contrast with the twisted love he feels for her sister, whom far too much looks like her mother. Another death, that of the girl whom everyone feels will surely have a brilliant future and the struggle of the unwanted child in affirming her existence to gain her father's love. Characters so well developed, dialogues so well written you'll be looking around to greet the protagonists each time they appear in the plot. The depth reached in defining characters mind and soul has something of the spooky: crude and brutally realistic depictions, so we give of people in real life, with all their secrets and criptic sayings/doings.
A pageturner for me, I'm surprised not many have read this book and the author didn't receive much praises for having written it.

[Cissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very, very bleak- though I did find it a page-turner.