Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (48 page)

“The Body Electric” by Anne Downey does appear online, and she and her group were hit by lightning in the manner described.

Jersey itself is rendered as close as possible through the help of my amazing guide and wonderful photographer, Peter Webb. If you find yourself traveling to the Channel Islands, hire him and have him show you the mysterious caves and sights of the lovely and haunting island I’ve hardly done justice to in this book.

The Celts inhabited Jersey centuries ago; visual proof of it is everywhere you look. The dolmens and menhirs and passage graves I describe are for the most part the ones that actually exist. These Neolithic monuments have been dated as far back as 4800
BCE
. Sadly human sacrifice was practiced by these spiritual people in a time very different from ours.

What we discover in Hugo’s cave is invented. But the photograph that gives Jac her clue about where that cave might be is real—Hugo’s son took that picture of his father, and it remains one of the most evocative portraits of the great writer, poet and statesman. Hugo was a genius—one of the most creative and important writers of his time, perhaps of all time, and he’s not only been a very gracious host for the last few years, but a very, very great inspiration.

I love challenges, but to tell the story of Victor Hugo’s experiments with séances in his own voice? What kind of crazy idea had I come up with? Surely it was lunacy to even attempt it.

I don’t have literary illusions. I had just fallen in love with Hugo’s story and wanted to tell it. What fascinated me was how much had been written about his life as a statesman, poet and author of
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
and
Les Misérables
, but how little had been written about a certain part of his personal life: his dabbling with hashish, his preoccupation with reincarnation and the more than one hundred séances he’d conducted during a two-year period while he lived on the Isle of Jersey.

During my research, I hadn’t once stopped to think that in order to tell the story of Hugo’s seduction by the spirit world, I would have to find his voice.

But there I was. Finally ready to write, sitting at a computer in a very twenty-first-century world trying to conjure a mid-nineteenth-century genius. For weeks I was stumped.

Then I had a revelation. I didn’t need to invoke the genius, just the man. I had read Hugo’s letters. I knew that the eloquence and
brilliance of his poetry and prose didn’t always exhibit itself when he was writing to people close to him. Sometimes he was an extraordinary man saying ordinary things to his family.

That was the Hugo I needed to try to find. The one who was relating a tale to an intimate. Not writing for the ages. Not trying to be brilliant—just attempting to reason out an unreasonable time in his life that had disturbed him.

But I still couldn’t do it. The cold keyboard, the sound of the mechanical clicking, the icons at the top of the page, the spell-check. All of it was a gulf between me and the man I needed to channel. I decided it was hubris to even attempt to write this novel. Absurd to try. And yet, I couldn’t give up.

Carl Jung said that often coincidences aren’t coincidences at all.

One day in a fit of frustration I got up from my desk in a huff and managed to tip over a jar of pens. One was an old fountain pen. It rolled and fell on the computer. I stared at it for a moment. What if. . . .

I found a bottle of ink. Filled the pen. Then pulled out a simple notebook and started to write. Not the way
I
write, on a computer, but the way Victor Hugo would have written more than one hundred and fifty years ago. Pen on paper. I began. And as the ink flowed . . . the words flowed.

I don’t remember writing this book. Each day when I sat down and uncapped my pen, I disappeared into the world of the novel. Three notebooks and 122,833 words later, I finished
Seduction
. Two of those pages are photographed and used as endpapers in this volume.

Seduction
is the first novel I’ve written by hand. Perhaps the last. Definitely one of the most fascinating journeys I’ve ever taken.

I do very much hope it proves fascinating for you as well.

Victor Hugo on the Rock of the Exiles, Isle of Jersey, between 1852 and 1855.

Also by M. J. Rose

FICTION

The Book of Lost Fragrances

Lip Service

In Fidelity

Flesh Tones

Sheet Music

Lying in Bed

The Halo Effect

The Delilah Complex

The Venus Fix

The Reincarnationist

The Memorist

The Hypnotist

NONFICTION

Buzz Your Book
(with Douglas Clegg)

What To Do Before Your Book Launch
(with Randy Susan Meyers)

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Melisse Shapiro

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition May 2013

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Designed by Jill Putorti

Jacket design by Alan Dingman

Jacket photographs by Arcangel

Author photograph by Pushett Irby Photography

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-1-4516-2150-1

ISBN 978-1-4516-2152-5 (ebook)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five