Conscience Point by Erica Abeel
Fiction Hardcover
ISBN 13: 978-1-932961-53-9
5.5 x 8.25 / 272 pages / $24.95
October 14, 2008
Summary | Excerpt | Praise | A Note from the Author | Reading Guide | Bio | Events
Summary
A talented woman becomes entranced with a mega-wealthy family in a story about a mysterious love with two faces; the battle to stay relevant in the post-literate world; a shocking betrayal that exposes the past of characters "rotten with secrets"; and, finally, the passion to reclaim old dreams. This genre-bending novel mixes heartbreak, Gothic atmospherics, and a satire of New York's high-stakes players.
Conscience Point is about Madeleine Shaye, a beautiful over-achiever with a dual career as concert pianist and TV arts correspondent; her adored college-age daughter, adopted as an infant under murky circumstances; and a blissful relationship with editor Nick Ashcroft, scion of an uber-rich family (whose sister earlier played a decisive role in Maddy's young life). Then it all unravels. Maddy loses her footing in a late-90's marketplace skewed toward youth and pop culture. Her daughter announces she's leaving college to work in Guatemala, hinting darkly at mysterious trouble. And Maddy discovers that Nick has betrayed her in a way she could never have imagined. Her tough resilience, ability to love and sacrifice while making moral choices informs the emotional center of this novel.
The intimate drama of a family shadowed by the past, Conscience Point captures the struggles of accomplished baby boomers (and NY social circle insiders) and scrambling to re-invent themselves and stay afloat in the post-literate age (says Maddy, "I won't move over till I fall over"); offers smart, enlightening observations, information and descriptions of the world of music; lampoons the elitist NY artsy community; satisfies our prurient hunger to eavesdrop on and judge the almost too decadent, consequence-free lives of the mega-rich. Set in part at Conscience Point, Nick's crumbling family estate, this genre-bending novel also draws on gothic conventions as it uncovers dark secrets while at the same time it plumbs a touchingly human nostalgia for the sort of youthful passion that is seldom equaled in later life.
A Note from the Author
Welcome! I'm delighted to tell you a little about my new novel Conscience Point. The book — my fifth — was a long time coming – partly because I also teach, write film features, and hang with my wonderful family; but also because this story of a woman's journey found its shape according to its own inscrutable calendar.
Conscience Point sprang from many sources, one a visit to 19th century writer George Sand's manor house in deep France, where I'd been sent on assignment. Sitting on Sand's evening terrace sipping a Kir; wandering the country roads after dinner — with a stop at Sand's moonlit graveyard — I knew I had to set a scene in this spot.
Some of the hauntedness of that place rubbed off on Conscience Point. It's about a mysterious love with two faces; and about nostalgia for the sort of youthful passion that's seldom equaled in later life. A genre-bending novel (as we say in film-speak), it mixes heartbreak and Gothic atmospherics with a wicked satire of East Cost high fliers. Since my heroine is a concert pianist, it's a novel filled with music and inspired by music – in particular, Chopin's "Harp Etude." I designed Conscience Point to keep your fingers turning pages. I hope, too, you'll feel buoyed by a story about soldiering on when the known world collapses, finding renewal beyond revenge, and reinventing your life.
—Erica Abeel
Praise
"[Conscience Point is] a richly drawn portrait of an ambitious yet appealing parvenu's encounter - indeed, collision - with the wealthy and entitled. . . . Ms. Abeel is good at incorporating shrewd observations into a structure evoking the literary traditions of Waugh, Proust, Dickens, plus a touch of Stendhal, Nabokov, and Roth. . . . Could more drama be packed into one book?" —The East Hampton Star
"...I was absolutely shocked and couldn't put the book down...amazing prose...detailed and rich...[it] unfolds perfectly." —Booking Mama
"...a dreamlike novel. Abeel does a wonderful job...an astonishing narrative of one woman's life." —Christy's Book Blog
“Erica Abeel's Conscience Point is very sharp indeed--proceed with caution--but funny and sexy and smart enough so you'll fly through it." —Alan Furst, author of The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel
"Abeel’s fifth novel is an engaging read with plot twists and complex characters….Echoing Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited…this is ultimately a story about retaking the road not taken and reclaiming one’s purpose in life." —Library Journal
"An elegantly written, sharply observed saga, swirling with dark secrets and strong personalities. Conscience Point is a wholly satisfying read--enticing, suspenseful and difficult to put down." —John Berendt, author of The City of Falling Angels and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
"I had a very good time reading Conscience Point, savoring both the elegant prose and the page-turning story."
—Hilma Wolitzer, author of Summer Reading: A Novel and Hearts: A Novel
“Conscience Point is a rare novel, gracefully written, deftly unfolding its chilly secrets, exploding with witty little gems on almost every page. It’s a gripping story that could have happened in real life.” —Marion Meade
Bio
Erica Abeel is the author of four books, including Women Like Us (Book of the Month Club selection); The Last Romance; I'll Call You Tomorrow and Other Lies between Men and Women; and Only When I Laugh, a memoir (Literary Guild selection). Abeel has frequently published articles and reviews in The NY Times, NYTBR, etc. A former dancer, Abeel was, until recently, Professor of French literature at City University of New York. She currently writes film reviews, features, and a "Critic's Notebook" (covering Cannes, Toronto, and other major festivals) for Filmmaker Magazine, indieWIRE.com, Film Journal International and Interview. Last May she blogged daily for Filmmaker Magazine from Cannes, blogged and wrote a Critic's Notebook for Filmmaker during the New York Film Festival.
Excerpt
I suppose it was the accident that wild, wet night on Wildmoor that got me writing this story. This … call it Gothic modern tale, complete with family curses, unquiet spirits, forbidden love—a bizarre crime, even; seasoned, of course, with ’90s grabbiness and irony. A story rather in keeping with the fantastical contours of Conscience Point. Like some back-lot castle for Ivanhoe, Violet used to joke. Held together with plaster ’n’ spit.
I wrote because the accident felt … fated; like a crack on the head from the past, capstone to a course set in motion decades back. A course that began one glorious May afternoon when I breached the garden wall to an enchanted country. I needed to understand: How could people so blessed by fortune so bungle it, and end in a pileup of buckled metal? Even allowing for the contrarian imp that rides us all? And my own blindness: How did I not see what was there to see all along?
Deep into my draft, though, new revelations surfaced, shoving a counter-version in my face—and forcing me to scramble for a foothold as old certainties crumbled like shale. And then, an odd thing: I discovered I was writing a letter of sorts, across continents and years, to a child in whom all the players in this tale are mingled.
If my letter should ever reach him, he’ll learn how we’re all bound up together—he and I, Laila, Violet, Nick. More entwined than through the usual ties of blood. And though we’ve all spun apart now, he’ll sense, my reader, how those ties persist, like phosphorescence lighting the night sea. And he’ll know, too—in the end, real estate rules—that Conscience Point is his to claim any time he chooses.
How strangely mixed up together we all are. Isn’t that what Nick said in the library that stormy night?
But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself; better not hop all over the lot. After all, I’m writing, too—such is human vanity—to put the world on notice that our little caravan passed this way. The trick is to put a bit of starch in the narrative. The trick is to lay it out the way it happened. Before I start missing them all too much …