Book description
Peter Bell the Third, accidentally named from the title of a poem by
Percy Bysshe Shelley, is called upon to renew his old friendship with
Rowland Usher, who was deliberately named after the protagonist of a
story by Edgar Allan Poe. In the new House of Usher that Rowland is
growing in the Orinoco Delta, Usher explains the scientific work in
genetics that he's doing there to Peter, while they both mourn Rowland's
dead twin sister, Magdalen, who has apparently committed suicide for
reasons that no one quite understands. As a scientist, Peter is
inevitably convinced, when he discovers Magdalen's “ghost” haunting the
house, that the haunting can only be figurative and symbolic-but that
does not make it any less meaningful, or problematic. A marvelous new
novel in this long-running series by a master of biological
extrapolation.
