Audrey Craven

Audrey Craven has cultivated a reputation for brilliance through sheer social invention, a carefully assembled persona of originality and eccentricity. But beneath the beautiful façade lies something far less interesting: a shallow, selfish woman of negligible intelligence, perpetually chasing extraordinary minds in hopes they might reflect some of their greatness back onto her. She imagines herself destined to be a muse, inspirer of great men and women, though she possesses nothing to give but appetite. When she inserts herself into the lives of serious artists, religious mystics, scientists, and earnest lovers, the novel asks an uncomfortable question: will these encounters transform her, or will her hungry self-centeredness consume the very people she admires? May Sinclair's debut is a pitiless portrait of a particular fin-de-siècle type, the woman who collects interesting people the way others collect china, never noticing she has no soul of her own. It remains remarkably fresh for its unsentimental willingness to show a beautiful young woman as something other than sympathetic, and for its clear-eyed view of how people mistake social performance for depth.