Annunciation

Calling upon his full powers as a novelist, David Plante, the author of the celebrated Francoeur trilogy, offers his most complex and powerful novel to date. Written in the masterly prose for which he is renowned, Annunciation, a multilayered novel set in New York and London, Italy and Russia, illuminates the plight of modern man in an apparently random world. In London, Claire's sixteen-year-old daughter, Rachel, is raped on her way home from school; pregnant, she decides to keep the child. Claire, a student of art, believes that she must devote herself to helping her daughter find the will to survive. In New York, Claude, an editor of art books, is shocked to discover in himself violent fantasies aroused by his relationship with a sexually demanding but nonloving woman, and he accepts a transfer to London, where he meets Claire and Rachel. When Claire discovers a reference to an unknown painting, of the Annunciation by a Renaissance artist, the lead sends her and Rachel to Italy and then to Russia, where Claude's destiny is irrevocably linked to theirs. In David Plante's skillful prose, Annunciation takes the shape of a quest for meaning, beauty, and love in a world of pain and despair. It is as deep and haunting a work as any novel of recent years, and it confirms David Plante as one of the most talented writers working today.