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After Anjelica (detail) Ann Bone
‘The curve of pavement brought her into view,
heading uphill towards me. She was walking confidently, taking large steps. At
first I saw her as a silhouette. Her shoulders were thrown back by her
movement, the line of her neck left clear by the wide, gathered opening of her
blouse. Her skirt tumbled like the tide around her striding legs. As she came
nearer I was aware of her hair. It was ringleted and blond and stood out round
her head, picking up the sunlight and refracting it. Even before I saw her in
any more detail, I had the sense that she was claiming a freedom. From her
dress she could be a gypsy or a Bloomsbury intellectual. She was going to be
anything she wanted...’ When Anjelica arrives barefoot at the doorstep
of Laura’s bohemian Hampstead house, she is on a pilgrimage: she has left her
dour northern origins to see for herself the magnificent oil painting that
dominates the kitchen. No one can resist the gifted and beautiful young artist:
an artistic community needs artists, even devours them. Anjelica's new 'family'
both love her and fatally endanger her – and no one more so than Brigid, the
narrator, the shadow to Anjelica's light. In a sweeping psychological drama,
this group of artists, journalists and intellectuals move through the years
from the carefree excesses of the 1950s to the nemesis of the 1990s.
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