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Overview
The Judas Glass is the story of one man's horrible - and wonderful - return to life, of revenge and deliverance, and of love beyond death. It is a tale of doomed love and mysterious murder, that depicts the vampire myth's seductive magic but remakes it into a new experience. Richard Stirling is a successful attorney, devoted to protecting the rights of the underprivileged. His life is his work, and even the disappointments of his marriage, and his sorrow at the violent world around him, fail to shake his belief in justice. His life is illuminated by a love affair with a beautiful pianist, Rebecca Pennant, a woman full of surprises, music, and humor, and he is reawakened to the possibilities of life. When Rebecca is brutally murdered, this vanishes. Stirling's mourning is interrupted by the arrival of a lost heirloom he remembers from his childhood, a beautiful looking-glass now returned without explanation. This mirror's reflections gradually transform his experiences of the sensual world, even as it draws him over to the other side of life. When he awakens from death, he find himself open to new sensations, even bloodlust. And now he has the power of both life and death.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Cadnum (Skyscraper) rings an original variation on the vampire theme with this haunting evocation of the sensual world lost beneath the routines of daily life. Narrator Richard Stirling is a youngish lawyer with a comfortable Bay Area practice and a disintegrating marriage when he cuts his hand on a mysterious antique mirror. The injury gives him an abnormal sensitivity to his surroundings, the first symptom of a nascent vampirism that consumes him after his accidental death. Liberated from the tunnel vision of his mortality, Richard finds himself intoxicated with a new appreciation of the living world and resurrects his murdered mistress, Rebecca, to share his strange existence. ``We could imagine ourselves to be the beginning of creation, not fugitives from one,'' he remarks as they traverse the countryside, fleeing pursuers and reveling in the wonders of nature. But their superhuman awareness only drives home how unnatural their unlife is, and Richard determines to reacquire the mirror and regain his humanity. Cadnum brings an intensity of vision to this novel found in few other vampire stories. Richard's initial emergence from his coffin is a narrative tour de force of terror and confusion, and the book abounds with insights on how our mortality shapes our understanding of the world. In St. Peter's Wolf, Cadnum leveraged the werewolf theme into a forceful exploration of the human condition; he does the same here with the vampire theme, in what is bound to be one of the more provocative horror novels of 1996. (Feb.)Book Details
Published
December 26, 1996
Publisher
Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc
Pages
320
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780786702398