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Author » Alice Thompson. The book collector, p. The Book Collector, page 7. Try our free service – convert any of your text to speech! More than 10 english voices! But then she looked up to see Archie staring at her strangely. He looked surprised. She hardly ever saw him surprised. It was as if everything that happened to him had already been expected by him. Probably just admiring the perfection of the scene.

Not people. But if I did collect people I would certainly collect you. She needed to know she was special to him. Felix clambered off her and started to crawl across the garden, just as Clara was coming up the path, carrying a basket of fruit she had picked from the greenhouses.

Clara bent down to take Felix. Archie returned to reading his newspaper. Violet thought it odd that Archie did not acknowledge Clara. It was as if he were deliberately ignoring her. It was out of character, as he had the manners of a gentleman.

And a pain struck her heart at the thought she could have married anyone else. Violet laughed. We are made in the image of our Creator. Even a kiss? The housemaid was busy polishing the silver, so Violet went to answer it. An hunched old man, stinking of drink, was standing there, looking at her lewdly. His eyes were bloodshot and his brown suit covered in patches.

She wanted to shut the door immediately but he had wedged his foot in the doorframe. You seem surprised. Archie had told her she had helped bring up her two younger brothers. He adores her. Why was he looking so worried? Just at that moment Clara came into the kitchen. As she saw the man sitting there, a look of utter horror crossed her face, quickly replaced by a forced smile of welcome.

She could see Clara trying not to take a step back. The inn. Gardening, hard labour. Was she supposed to say something? Offer this uncouth man some kind of employment?

He suddenly looked very pale. He was moving more slowly and clumsily than ever. It will be fine. She looked sheepish. Someone must have told him where I was working. Violet knew what she was feeling and thinking, as she often had that feeling of being over-responsible. I could ask Bea if she needs anyone. My father. It was not about emotional placidity but about secrecy. She was very private. She now knew why Clara worked so assiduously. That night at dinner she discussed the subject with Archie.

A drunkard and convict. And her so prim and proper. He will do him no harm. She sets such high standards. Not enough fun for Felix? After what happened he needs fun. Then everyone will be happy. Thinking Clara must be outside, she went upstairs but to her surprise, Clara was already in the nursery, standing by the cot. Her arms were outstretched as if about to pick up Felix, who had his arms lifted up towards her. But Clara, with an odd smile on her face, then slowly let her arms fall to her side.

He thinks you are going to pick him up! That behaviour, Violet thought, will make him more dependent on her. If he thinks he may lose her, he will crave her comfort all the more. Is that why she was doing it? Or was it, as she said, just a silly game? She thought of Archie, his absences, and how dependent on him she had grown. Do people learn to manipulate the emotions of others instinctively, she wondered? But Felix started to cry again when Clara tried to give him over to Violet. He clung to Clara fiercely as if frightened to let go.

Perhaps it was just delight that Felix loved her so much. That evening she mentioned what had happened to Archie, expecting him to understand her concern. But instead he looked cross.

In fact you would be lost without her. But I thought it a strange game. Even cruel. Clara would not have meant to be cruel. She would just have been playing with him. Look how Felix loves her. He would crawl over to her, and Clara would take him in her arms and lift him up and swing him round as he giggled. She wanted to block out any vision of Clara other than the one she needed her to be.

Her own version of herself had become unstable and various. From the drawing room window, the next day, she observed Clara in the garden with Felix. It was a halcyon picture, Clara sitting on the lawn, her hair shining in the sunlight as Felix crawled around her in circles, laughing infectiously, his smile lighting up his ecstatic face.

Violet saw Archie strolling across the garden towards them. She watched as he bent down and picked up Felix, cradling him in his arms. He exchanged a few words with Clara, who looked bashfully down, as he addressed her. They made a handsome couple, Violet thought, the two of them together: one charismatic, the other passive.

That night she dreamt she was following Archie down a tunnel. It was a dark labyrinth carved into a cliff face. Tunnels were veering off in all directions but she could follow his imprints in the dusty rocky ground, as if they were breadcrumbs. Her heart was beating faster. She turned round and ran back out through the tunnel into the sunlight.

Compelled, as if she were sleepwalking, pulled along by a power external to herself, she went downstairs to the drawing room where the piano stood by the window. She opened the lid and put her hands on the keys. The ivory was cool and hard to her touch, reassuringly solid compared to the unreality of her feelings and surroundings. The moon was shining through the window, reflecting off the polished wood of the piano as if it were made of glass. She had not played music since giving birth to Felix.

It seemed too risky, as if somehow she would be giving something up of herself that she could not afford to spare. She tried a few notes, but it was as if she had forgotten how to play.

 
 

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Author » Alice Thompson. The book collector, p. The Book Collector, page Try our free service – convert перейти на страницу of your text to speech! More than alicr english посетить страницу источник As she walked back through the village, she wondered about returning to the field.

She decided not to. She reached the house, where she saw Clara at the kitchen window, her hair glinting in the sun. She looked like a visitation, a hard angel, cut out from stained glass.

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She found her breathing grow heavier. As she approached the dlwnload it looked exactly the same as it had when she had shown Archie the scene earlier. The water flowed gently. She peered into the stream. There seemed to be no disturbance to the pebbles or indentation in the sandy bottom. She took off her shoes and socks and entered the water.

It was freezing, like a wild animal biting into her flesh. She walked further into the water. The reflection of bool sunlight on the water still concealed some of the bottom of the stream. If she could look directly down, using her body to shield the water from the sun, she could see the bottom clearly. There were just some golden pebbles and a few jagged black rocks.

Some delicate strands of green weeds, waving in the currents. Something had been caught on one of them, a thread of silver light.

She bent down into the cold water, the book collector alice thompson free download hand feeling as if it had been turned fres stone. She carefully plucked the weed, tugging it out of the pebbles.

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She opened up her hand and there on her palm lay the weed, thin and delicate and frail. Caught up in the weed was a glittering piece of metal, a silver pendant in the shape of the letter B. She the book collector alice thompson free download the pendant out the book collector alice thompson free download the weed.

B for Betsy. The pendant was cold and hard, and real to the touch of her skin. Later, she yhe the piece of jewellery in her jewellery box. They had taken all her secrets away from her in the asylum. They had shone a light on them and seized them for themselves. To her surprise the butler let her in without question and again showed her up to the drawing room to wait.

She the book collector alice thompson free download up a book from a table. On the cover was a fine ink drawing: it clearly was a tattoo. She touched the inky artifice of the wheel. The cover felt like skin, she thought. She opened up the book. It was of a book of poems by Milton. Lavinia came in to see her looking at it.

She never collected it aliice me. Some like to bind books thompsson human skin as a keepsake. Can be of someone who is loved. What is it that Shakespeare says? Books take precedence over our the book collector alice thompson free download human mortality.

It just seems sensible to me. Archie asked if I would do this for him, too. To bind a book. I imagine it was the book you were asking about the last time you were here. He had a book of fairy tales he had been planning to give Rose on their first wedding anniversary. She had always loved fairy tales. You bound a book in her skin? It worked beautifully. I had to dry the skin first.

And stretch it. She had pale skin. It took the green dye well. He wanted gree piece of skin especially, to remind him of her. It took a while to do this. By the time I had finished, he had married you.

She had trusted him with her life. And she had believed in their marriage, she collctor believed that if they just both kept walking without looking down, they bokk get to the other side. Thomoson had let him into her heart when she should have erected barriers around it and built walls and dug a moat beneath and filled the moat with deep collecttor. One night she followed her husband down the road again. He continued walking through the forest to a sheer rock face where a tunnel had been roughly hewn into its side.

She watched as he disappeared into it. She was scared of what she might discover. She читать back home and went to bed and slept long and dreamlessly. The next night, she got out of bed. Easybcd 2.3 windows free was a moonlit night and she could see everything clearly. Archie was sound asleep. She got dressed and crept out of the house the book collector alice thompson free download went down the colldctor to the woods.

At first she missed the tunnel and had to retrace her steps using a deformed tree, bent over low like a witch, as a marking post. At the entrance of the tunnel she could hear crying sounds or was it just the cry of an owl from far above? She entered the tunnel and came to a http://replace.me/25175.txt of doors.

She tried one, but it was locked. But there was the book collector alice thompson free download answer. Then she heard music coming from inside one of the rooms.

It was piano music, the sound of Schumann, one of his last sonatas. Was someone playing the book collector alice thompson free download the piano? Or was it a recording? She walked back home, her heart pounding at what she was discovering about her husband. This new fairy story she had been plunged into against her will. In the book collector alice thompson free download morning she came downstairs. She heard the same Schumann продолжить she had heard in the cave coming from the piano in the drawing room.

She went clolector the doorway. Had it been Clara who had been playing the piano in the cave? Violet quietly stepped away from the doorway. Violet confronted Archie when he returned home. For the binding. And now you are murdering women taken from the downoad. And Clara is helping you. What are you doing collectpr them? What are you talking about?

 
 

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The book had gone. Her utter devastation and anger were beyond all reason. She was seized by panic. She found Clara in the laundry room. You have stolen it from the safe. Lord Murray has told me how that book preoccupies you. Violet tried to become accustomed to the fact that the book had gone, accept its loss as just another event, but could not. She went around as if part of her heart had been removed. The following afternoon Clara came into the drawing room.

Violet noticed that Clara was muddy. You are covered in mud. His baby clothes were spotless and his hands were clean. She never talked about her own late parents and never asked about his either. It had been enough for her that he suggested by his manner, his culture, his cultivation, that he had a history — had a life of elite university education, sophisticated women and select friendships.

She went to the bookshelf in the library that contained miscellany. She found a single photograph album in dark crimson leather tucked away on a bottom shelf. She took the album outside into the garden and, sitting on a bench, opened it up at random. There, towards the end of the album, was a photograph of their registry wedding, Archie, her, the witnesses and the minister.

And then a photograph of her in their marriage bed, holding the newborn Felix in her arms. Flicking backwards, she found an older photograph of Archie as a young boy. He was standing in front of their house, his parents standing on either side of him, but how alone he seemed, as if he was deliberately keeping himself apart from them.

She opened the book at random on another page. There was a photograph of a woman, looking as if she were asleep, in the same marriage bed, another newborn baby apparently asleep in her arms.

Violet studied her still face. Yes, the bookshop man had been right, she could see a physical similarity to herself in this death picture of Rose and her child. A dragonfly hovered about the lawn with its buzzing sound. She hated the way they flew — like machines. Then silence. She looked up. It had landed near her on a wooden chair. How ugly it looked with its thin linear body like an exclamation mark and its black and yellow pattern.

There was a final photo. A recent one of Archie, she judged, by his imperceptibly aged appearance. Standing next to him was a slightly older voluptuous woman in an over-furnished opulent drawing room. She looked dark and sensual as if a slave to predictable appetites.

She wore a heavily brocaded golden and blue dress with a wide sash tied at her unnaturally narrow waist. Archie looked different in this photograph, more uncertain and secretive.

His face seemed the product of a different kind of situation, standing so near to the older woman. But the look in his eyes was the same, detachedly amused at a private joke. She felt convinced this woman had some kind of power over him.

She turned the photograph over. On the back Archie had just scribbled Lavinia. What was the private joke, she wondered? She stood up slowly — she would take a walk to the edge of the estate to clear her mind. The sun was beating down on her, in spite of the large-brimmed hat she was wearing.

It was so hot, unnaturally hot. The long grasses around her stroked her bare legs. It was even too warm for the birds, except for the occasional brave chirrup. It was nearing noon. It was as if her idyll had been petrified in the heat. Had become a nightmare version of its former self, all still hard lines of a surrealist painting. Even the small fluttering of the tiny black butterflies suddenly looked like batwings.

The heat was making her jump from one hallucinatory image to the next. It was then she saw her, lying outstretched on the field near the edge of a stream, a woman concealed in the long grass.

The shadows of the leaves of the trees above were playing delicately on her face. As Violet drew nearer she could see the woman was posed in a shape of a star. Her right arm was missing. It had been cut off below the socket. Blood had soaked the grass around her, as if she had bled to death, and was running into the stream. Iron rings had tethered her to the ground. The wing had been placed on the ground in place of the missing arm.

The entrails were spilling out like so many question marks. Violet resisted the convulsions in her throat, the desire to retch. The body had been skinned carefully, all skin removed. It did not look like a human being now, but that is how we all look, she thought, under the skin, below the illusion of our surface.

The head remained intact. The pretty face of Betsy looked up, her eyes open, her mouth parted. Grey liquid oozed from the lips.

Violet wondered if it were semen. Who or what had done this to Betsy? Was it a man, or animal? Or someone who was both? She thought she saw a dark shadow move behind the trees.

She turned and ran through the fields back into the cool hallway of the house. She felt unable to think clearly. She had to think clearly. Through the hall window she could see Clara with Felix at the far end of the garden playing with a ball. How perfect the scene looked, the trees in full leaf. It was as if she could smell the roses and the herb garden with its strong, pungent scent of sage.

Perhaps what she had seen was just a return of the delusions. She had to compose herself. She looked at herself in the hall mirror, brushed down her hair and narrowed her widened panic-stricken eyes. She turned and walked slowly out into the garden. Should she approach them? But her appearance might unnerve them. She was too far away. She walked over the gravel driveway onto the lawn. Her legs felt weak, her whole body was trembling.

She had to appear calm. Felix must not see how distressed she was; it was important to protect him. The gravel was dry after so many rainless days. When she was halfway across the lawn, Felix saw her and started to wave. She waved back. Clara looked up and saw her. Violet beckoned for her to come over to her.

Clara threw the ball for Felix who crawled after it and Clara walked slowly towards her, a gentle smile on her face. Felix is a curious and sensitive child; if he sees anything strange it will upset him. As Clara approached, the sun caught her hair. The two women walked back to the house. A body of a woman from the asylum. Her expression had subtly altered, looked watchful rather than concerned.

Have a rest. Have a cold drink. Lord Murray will be back soon. Violet felt like screaming at her. I saw it! Where is it? Wait for Archie.

Clara took her firmly by the hand and led her into the empty kitchen. Violet sat down on a chair, feeling oddly cold. Kindle Edition. Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection. Junji Ito.

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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Verified Purchase. No sense of place or time, characters flat and rigid, like cardboard cutouts. Confused and ultimately boring story. But the worst thing about the novel is the writing, imprecise and pretentious. I’m surprised that it was published by Salt. I reads like a badly edited self-published book.

One person found this helpful. Do not see where it is trying to vring me to. Can’t finish tje last one-third. A remarkably creepy gothic tale that I highly recommend to all book lovers, readers and horror fans. I do not want to say much about the book as to not spoil it but I will say that if you love Poe you will love this story.

The book follows a woman named Violet, an obsessed book reader and how she falls in love and marries Archie, an obsessed book collector. It all begins when Archie tells Violet of a rare book of fairy tales that she is not ever allowed to see or read.

That is all I will say! I recommend this book to everyone. I read this book for the AutumnReadAThon. A gothic style mystery surrounding books and madness. See all reviews. Top reviews from other countries. This is a strange evocative novella with echoes of The Yellow Wallpaper. A tale of a series of fairytale inspired murders. As with Angela Carter however the heroine comes into her own power in a cataclysmic manner. Had its frightfully beautiful twisted moments, but the sum was not bigger than the parts.

I was constantly waiting for that crisp bite and shaking clues to the human mind and in that respect I was let down. I keep hoping for another gem like Justine from this author. Funnily enough for anyone who’s read it, for me this book is skin and broken bones I cannot fault this book in any way; Violet’s character builds to a superb climax as she suffers unjustly at the hand of a fairy tail nightmare.

The clash of worlds intertwined with love and obsession form an explosive crisscrossing of fantasy and reality.