Damage

March 4, 1991
In this mesmerizing first novel, a story of sexual obsession, British author Hart writes in spare, measured prose that both reflects the narrator's lifelong anomie and current dark depression and is an appropriate contrast to the fevered story he relates. When the unnamed narrator, a reputable physician and rising MP, meets mysterious, compelling Anna Barton, ``the shock of recognition passed through my body like a powerful current.'' For the first time in an outwardly lucky life, he feels passion and joy, emotions that a longtime ``happy'' marriage and fatherhood have never generated. Anna immediately acknowledges the erotic bond between them, and the two begin a frenzied affair, its moral complications exacerbated by the fact that Anna is the narrator's son's fiancee. In addition, cool, self-confident Anna warns that she was irreparably damaged by her brother's suicide: ``Damaged people are dangerous. They know that they can survive.'' Aware from the outset that the price of his consuming lust will be the destruction of the narrator's life, the reader is immersed in the taut, swiftly paced drama, whose denouement, despite foreshadowing, comes as a surprise. Readers may find the prose overly mannered, however, and the novel more successful as an emotional tour de force than as a credible study of human nature. 50,000 first printing; Literary Guild alternate selection.

January 1, 1992
Hart's tragic and emotional tour de force, which spent 16 weeks on PW 's hardcover bestseller list, is narrated by a man obsessed with his son's fiancee. This Literary Guild selection has 90,000 hardcover copies in print.

February 1, 2023

Twenty years before E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey had readers all bewitched, bothered, and/or bewildered, a less salacious but equally passionate tale of sexual compulsion written by Josephine Hart, aka Baroness Saatchi (1942-2011) swept through the literary world like a fever, or at least a hot flash. The swift, taut drama of the successful middle-aged narrator's hopeless fascination with his son's fianc�e Ann Barton, an enthrallingly damaged woman who seems equally in thrall (or is she?), is perhaps best consumed in a single sitting, the better to lose critical distance and submit to the novel's hypnotic pull toward a catastrophe with the terrible inevitability of classic noir, minus the tough stuff. VERDICT Next to the often-contrived twists and revelations of today's psychological suspense, Hart's spare tale of all-consuming obsession is refreshingly straightforward. Louis Malle directed a 1992 film adaptation of the same name; a limited series for Netflix is currently underway, so anticipate demand.

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