This rare venture into the supernatural by the master of realism, George Eliot, is a devastating psychological horror story that asks: What is the true price of seeing too clearly?
Latimer is a man cursed. Afflicted by a severe illness, he awakens with a terrifying and unwanted "superadded consciousness." He can read the thoughts of everyone around him, glimpsing their petty motivations, shallow ambitions, and secret malice. Every social interaction becomes a cacophony of triviality and inner cruelty.
His only sanctuary is Bertha Grant, a woman of cool, dazzling beauty whose mind alone remains a baffling enigma to his telepathic power. Desperate for genuine connection, he falls obsessively in love and marries her, convinced she holds the key to his peace.
But Latimer is also haunted by prophetic visions, including a terrifying glimpse of his own future with Bertha. As he struggles against the inevitability of fate and the terror of clairvoyance, he is drawn into a chilling plot of poison and scientific experimentation that threatens to strip away the final, fatal barrier between the living and the dead.