This is the story of Tess of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and of the woman who became the incarnation of his most famous fictional creation, the beautiful actress Gertrude Bugler, herself the daughter of the model for the original Tess and the recipient of Hardy's amorous advances.
It's the story, too, of all the 'foredames', as Hardy named them, of his Tess: the story of women seen and imagined by men, and the temble consequences of the incarnation of such a vision: a story of love, betrayal, and revenge
Emma Tennant has weaved her own spell, with her tale of a contemporary Tess, and a murder that must be solved... a tale of Tess the temptress, of Liza Lu. her little sister, the watcher, of Alec the childhood friend whose games are less innocent than mothers and fathers would care to imagine, a story of Dorset beaches and sun-baked summers, of a dream attained and of deaths of violence long foretold.
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