Author(s): Arthur Phillips

Fiction

When Constance, a lowly clerk in a London stationers, married Joseph Barton, a biological researcher, she believed she had found her ultimate husband and protector. But after three miscarriages and the troubled birth of their daughter, Angelica, Constance fears for her life. In an effort to avoid her wifely duties, Constance keeps the child in their bedroom for seven years. When Joseph orders their daughter out of the room, Constance begins to fear his intentions, his potentially murderous hatred of her, and his efforts to alienate her from Angelica.Sensing the presence of supernatural evil in the house, she calls upon a spiritualist to combat the threats she sees to her life and child, and becomes distraught as her domestic life deteriorates into disorder and perceived danger. But is Constance right? In four sections, each taking a different character's point of view, "Angelica" proceeds to weave a tapestry of parallel and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the lives of Constance, Ann Montague - the spiritualist in whom Constance places her deepest trust - Joseph, and, finally, Angelica. Nothing here is as it seems.