Paperback (top) designed by Helen Yentus. Hardcover is published by Knopf (Carol Devine Carson?). I love the placement of "a novel" in the paperback - so unexpected and off the grid! I guess in a super-symmetric design, it's always nice to stray from the symmetry a little. Note also that the author wrote In The Cut - which I assume was later made into a movie starring a naked Meg Ryan! The keys at the top, I'm assuming, signify the keys to the prison doors (see below) or the key to the mind. The same reference to the mystery of the mind is made in the paperback.
The story (from the New Yorker):
Set in a women’s prison on the Hudson River, Moore’s sixth novel chronicles the aftermath of a highly publicized murder and its impact on four intertwined lives. The story is told in the alternating voices of Helen, who has long suffered terrifying schizophrenic hallucinations and is serving a life sentence for killing her two small children; Helen’s psychiatrist, a single mother who came to work at the prison out of guilt over a patient’s suicide; a corrections officer who becomes involved with the psychiatrist; and an ambitious Hollywood star whom Helen believes to be her sister. Moore gradually probes Helen’s psychosis to its horrifying origins, while also delivering a nuanced and devastating account of the fights, rapes, and alliances built from necessity that constitute prison life.
5 comments:
For once, I find the paperback design better than the hardcover.
In the Cut was a great novel (and a bad movie).
And by the way the design of In the Cut's hardcover is by Archie Ferguson. I like it.
http://www.strandbooks.com/app/wwi/p/isbn/0679422587
Found this : John Gall's 5 rules for cover design :
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/coverstory/index.asp?cds2Pid=16444
Thanks, Gould. In the Cut looks cool. I'm not sure why the author's name is in that bar, but perhaps there's a good reason. Maybe it's a silver bar!
It's a silver bar indeed.
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