Instances of the Number 3 - Softcover

Vickers, Salley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312421125 ISBN 13: 9780312421120

Publisher: Picador, 2003

Synopsis

Following the death of Peter Hansome, his wife Bridget is contacted by Frances Slater, her late-husband's mistress. Though the two are from opposite sides of London and meet under the least desirable circumstances, the women become close friends. In a subtly wrought turn of events, Bridget and Frances discover that they have in common what is important to them most: their parallel memories of Peter, killed in a car accident, and the shared reality of his spirit form, haunting them still. A gracefully tuned feat of the imagination, Salley Vickers's novel is a rare celebration of life's most intriguing geometries, the love triangle.

About this title

Review

Salley Vickers' novel Instances of the Number Three is set in London and Shropshire. It describes the relationship between a dead man, his wife and his mistresses and is illuminated by philosophical ponderings on Hamlet and his ghost, and the poetry of Dante, Gerald Manley Hopkins and John Donne. Peter Hansome is the dead husband who walks through the pages of the novel, appearing to his wife Bridget in "his old tweed jacket and cords. He was, in fact, exactly, but without the disfiguring cuts and bruises of the accident, as she had seen him last--in his coffin. "To come to terms with his life and death, literature-loving Bridget makes friends with his mistress, Francis, an ex-artists' model: "She ... had a capacity for stillness and the kind of body which reflects planes of light." But as the omniscient narrator says:

This is not an account of feminine jealousy, or even revenge, instead its a story of negotiation and discovery as the characters orbit each other like little planets.

Vickers' prose style is witty, literary and decorous, her musing on the instances of the number three take in purgatory, heaven and hell; the eternal lovers triangle and the trinity (memorably described as the "different flavours of a Neapolitan ice"). The book is a controlled meditation on personal identity, passion and art, where emotions are analysed and reconciled. Sally Vickers' trick is to keep you interested in the hearts and lives of the characters as her novel of ideas gently unfurls.

This is a fine successor to Vickers' hugely successful debut novel, Miss Garnett's Angel, a subtle story of an older woman's emotional epiphany set in contemporary Venice. --Eithne Farry

Review

"Entertains even as it considers serious questions of sin and redemption, love and loss, what we venture in this life and the reckonings we may face in the great beyond." --Francine Prose, People

"A book to place on the shelf next to Marilynne Robinson's haunting Housekeeping and Penelope Fitzgerald's serene The Blue Flower....Harold Bloom once observed that a sense of strangeness in a work of art was one likely sign of greatness. Instances of the Number 3 possesses such an utterly assured, if quiet originality." --Michael Dirda, Crisis

"A comedy of manners and a ghost story...Thoroughly entertaining." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"A testament to the craftiness and generosity of spirit of the author, whom one hopes to hear from much more." --The Seattle Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312421125
• ISBN 13: 9780312421120
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324