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claire-obscure

by Billie Hinton (Goodreads Author)

3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 · rating details · 75 ratings · 24 reviews

Claire Caviness loves words and books. She wears vintage clothing and hides behind the camera lens and in the red light of her makeshift darkroom. She wants to be a writer but all she manages to write are letters to Virginia Woolf.

Lonely, unfulfilled, and envious of her best friend who has moved to Italy, Claire heads out to the same old club one night but takes a right tu...more

Kindle Edition, 260 pages

Published August 21st 2010 by November Hill Press

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Jul 20, 2012 Gaele rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

as copied from my Amazon review
Obscure, perhaps far too much so ...

I picked up the book simply because it looked far different from the norm - and I was drawn to the title. It took me nearly 3 weeks to finish this book of 260 or so pages. A record slow read for me. It didn't excite me to read it, I found the characters to be rather self-absorbed and mired within that self-proclaimed obscurity. Sad, because the premise of a girl/woman with a general dissatisfaction in her life and no real impetus...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 16, 2012 Elaine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries-thrillers-suspense, kindle, free-kindle-finds

Claire – her name. Obscure – not clear - describes her. Her life. Her wants and desires. What she wants from Finn. He asked her to move in with him but they don’t share a bed. They don’t share their bodies. Does she want to? She doesn’t know. Her feelings toward him are obscure – not clear - and he’s not making it easy. He’s just as messed up as she is. Probably more so as you will learn.

Other parts of her life are obscure to her. Her father is gay. Her mother has never showed her affection. She...more Claire – her name. Obscure – not clear - describes her. Her life. Her wants and desires. What she wants from Finn. He asked her to move in with him but they don’t share a bed. They don’t share their bodies. Does she want to? She doesn’t know. Her feelings toward him are obscure – not clear - and he’s not making it easy. He’s just as messed up as she is. Probably more so as you will learn.

Other parts of her life are obscure to her. Her father is gay. Her mother has never showed her affection. She wants so much to please her mother. To receive some kind of praise. A hug. Some affection. She studies and memorizes words in her dictionaries. If only she selects and uses the correct word then maybe her mother would love her.

Obscure – confusing - Taken advantage of repeatedly during high school, she is unclear whether she enjoys it or not. Confused. And Beth her boss. There’s confusion there as well. Beth wants her but Finn doesn’t seem to.

She shows how small she thinks of herself in the way she signs the letters she doesn’t mail, using all small letters instead of initial caps. She makes a phone call to a disc jockey just to have someone to talk to.

Claire is involved in three relationships. One as confusing as the other because each has holes – voids they need to fill. Pain they need to extinguish.

Suspicious death of a friend. A bi-sexual relationship. Cutting. Rape.

All this yet it’s not done for its shock value but as part of the lives and pain each endures. Escape. Need.

This is unlike any other I’ve read. Everything about this story is dark including the clothes our protagonist wears. The sex she uses as a means of filling the void and in place of love, never does what she wants it to, leaving her almost an empty shell of herself.

The ending feels very rushed. I’ll explain below as a spoiler. Otherwise, this story is well-thought out and rich with emotion, and that being mostly of deep pain and sadness.

*** Spoiler *** I would have expected more from Finn at the end especially since he had such a hold over her. There’s no chase where he tries to win her back. No fight for her from Raoul. Her therapy is only mentioned in the last letter she writes but doesn’t send. It’s as though she left Finn and things only got better from there with hardly a struggle.

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Sep 15, 2011 Lyn M (readinghearts) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Lyn M (readinghearts) by: Sisterhood of the Traveling Book

Shelves: 2011, books-i-own, series, read-for-review, smashwords

When I read the synopsis of this book, I was expecting to read the typical mystery/thriller. Girl meets boys, boy is a murderer, girl and friends have to solve the murder. Boy was I wrong. This book is nothing ordinary. It is the very complex story of a very complex cast of characters. Sometimes I loved them, sometimes I hated them, sometimes I was just disappointed in them. But always I was intrigued by them.

I could tell right away that this book was going to be a dark one. At the halfway poin...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Jean rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gr-authors, mind-blowers

Claire is a fractured young woman and, as a result, she allows herself to be abused physically and mentally by men. This book is not for the squeamish as it is very graphic in places an in other parts, it's downright creepy.

I'm not usually one for abuse and weirdness but Billy Hinton presents an excellent story with, albiet, seriously mentally unbalanced characters,holds one's attention throughout.

I am left with a new respect for the saying: "People who hurt, hurt others." Wow! Lots of psycholog...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 04, 2011 Rachel Cotterill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011, indie-and-small-press

First, a warning: this is not a book for the faint of heart. It starts with rape that's described bluntly, though not graphically, and follows through the consequences in Claire's life.

I don't even know how to categorise this book; it's like nothing else I've ever read. It has a classic "chick lit" romance premise (one girl, two boys, a difficulty in choosing) but has nothing else in common with that genre. This may be the darkest book I've ever read, yet there's not a single scene that feels li...more

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May 20, 2012 Saphrina rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is more some thoughts on the book rather than a review.

I've rated the book three and half stars, although unfortunately I can't add half a star here on goodreads. I really, really want to give it four. (After dwelling on it some more, I decided to give it four stars.) The fact that I've just blown off four odd hours in the middle of the day and the gamut of feelings was incredible in the first half of the book. (Although, I do read other books in the same fashion.)

I've been reading a lot of...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed-do-not-own

Beautiful and tragic. Not everyone will understand this tale which is at times difficult to read. But those with wounds that run deep will perhaps relate. and weep. Loved the word that she finally found in all her searching: cicatrice - the scar of a healed wound.

"I want to feel the ups and downs and passions of life without worrying that it's all too much. (...) I'm still a ways away, stuck outside the edges of the life I want to live and the person I want to be. What I know: every relationshi...more

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Jun 22, 2011 Naomi rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love this book for the complexity of its' characters. This book reminds me of another book I read called Sherry and Narcotics, in which the main character had a naivety to her that you know isn't going to bode well for her on sooo many levels. This book had me on the edge of my seat and was even darker than what I had expected. Final GR Rating 4.5/5 Stars

BTW...here is my Amazon review: This book and author were recommended to me and I am so happy she was. This book was fantastic. If you read t...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jul 04, 2012 Sheila rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This book is almost difficult for me to describe. Claire is...Claire. She is young and troubled, and the hurt she inflicts upon herself will make you want to shake some sense into her. You want to scream out warnings, but all you can do is hang in there abed hope she comes to her senses. It was that deep emotional involvement in Claire that made me love this story so much. I felt as though I was a friend of Claire's...seeing this all happen and wanting to save her, but knowing that wisdom can on...more

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Feb 03, 2012 James Everington rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a great book, and exceptionally well written. It's essentially a love-triangle story, although a complex, strange, and disturbing one. In its forensic depiction of emotional states and the dark side of love, it reminded me of some of Margaret Atwood's more realistic stories - high praise. I also liked the author's obvious love of words - the word definitions that headed chapters (which was in character for Claire) and the letters to Virginia Woolf were both great touches. One slight (and...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Karla rated it 3 of 5 stars

Claire is a complex, dark and complicated young woman. This book was very difficult at times to read because the unpleasant and dark parts were very descriptive. This book made me sad, and uncomfortable. However, with that being said Billie Hinton did an amazing job in writing this tale and really getting you into the characters skin. I would recommend this book but I think you do have to be in the right mind frame to read it. Twisted, dark, wrong, depressing, sad, broken, empty, abused, violate...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Angela rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very rarely does a book take me to a place where I feel as if I am part of the story. Emotionally I understood her relationships, I could feel her need and desires fulfilled by each man that became part of the story. To say I enjoyed the read would be an understatement. Ms. Hinton's descriptions of all aspects of the book were wonderful and detailed. Even though sexual actions played their part in this book, they played such a small part to the emotions of each character. I don't know that I wou...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Amanda Rudd rated it 4 of 5 stars

Claire-Obscure is about a young woman named Claire Caviness. It is written in first-person present tense. Here are the opening lines: “Dear Virginia Woolf, My name is Claire Caviness. I am twenty-one years old, with an English degree and a job at a bookstore. I am the only child of parents I rarely see. My mother has never hugged me. My father takes pleasure with men. I am no longer angry about that, but jealous, because he does something I cannot.” Claire writes letters to Virginia Woolf, telli...more Claire-Obscure is about a young woman named Claire Caviness. It is written in first-person present tense. Here are the opening lines: “Dear Virginia Woolf, My name is Claire Caviness. I am twenty-one years old, with an English degree and a job at a bookstore. I am the only child of parents I rarely see. My mother has never hugged me. My father takes pleasure with men. I am no longer angry about that, but jealous, because he does something I cannot.” Claire writes letters to Virginia Woolf, telling the story of her life. She collects words as if she is desperately seeking the right word to make everything better (and accordingly, a word and it’s definition open each chapter). She buys and wears eccentric vintage clothes. We also quickly learn that as a teenager Claire was raped not once, but twice, and this is (unsurprisingly) the deciding factor in her relationships with men.

And as the book opens, she meets a man at an art gallery named Finn Weston. Quickly, more quickly than seems possible (to her or the readers), she moves in with Finn, fancies herself in love with him, and becomes increasingly obsessed with him as she realizes he will not sleep with her. He has gone so far as to give her her own room in his apartment, and he locks his bedroom door at night. From here, things get more and more strange. One of Claire’s friends kills herself, her female boss at the bookstore comes on to her, and she meets another man named Raoul at a club, who quickly places himself Finn’s rival.

Put simply, this book is the portrait of a woman in crisis.

What made it difficult for me to read, especially in the first half of the novel, is that I was continuously frustrated by Claire’s actions and choices. I understood that the things she did were in a variety of ways reflections of the immense damage done to her, but that didn’t make me any less frustrated. I wanted so badly to grab her by the shoulders, shake her really hard, and explain to her exactly WHAT she was doing, WHY she was doing it, and why it was the WRONG thing to do. Because most of the time, she really didn’t know. And because I am always extremely hyper-self-aware, I sometimes have difficulty staying calm when others aren’t. So, every twenty minutes or so, I would get frustrated, growl at my Kindle, and toss it on the bed. Then after a couple hours of this back and forth, I would give up entirely and not read again for a couple days. Which meant it was going to take quite awhile to get through the whole novel.

What I want you to take away from this, however, is NOT that this is a bad book. Rather, the fact that I was able to be so painfully frustrated with this character, should tell you something about how real Billie Hinton was able to make Claire. I felt for her, I didn’t want to see her get hurt, and I didn’t want to see her do stupid things. I was worried about her. I wanted to jump into the novel and be the one friend who could figure out how to stop her and help her.

The two main male characters, Finn and Raoul, were also interesting, fleshed-out, and complicated characters. But most of the time, I didn’t want to help them, I just wanted to smack them. Hard. If I tell you why, that will be giving too much away. If you read it, you’ll see what I mean.

So, the characters are real and human and interesting. The story, slow in parts, frustrating in others, and pretty intense towards the end, probably would not have kept me going if I wasn’t so invested in making sure Claire ended up some place better than where she started out (though, toward the middle, I was beginning to worry that I was reading a tragedy and hadn’t been warned). It sort of felt like walking someone home because you want to make sure they gets there in one piece. The ending, while not precisely “happy” in the traditional “and she lived happily ever after” sense, was satisfying. And I felt it was safe enough to leave Claire at her front door, about to go inside.

There is, as I discovered at the end of the book, a sequel called Signs That Might Be Omens. But I’ll be honest, as much as I ended up liking Claire-Obscure in the end, I’m not sure I’ll pick up the sequel. The ending of Claire-Obscure seemed complete enough, and I don’t feel a sequel is necessary. And the short description of the sequel sounds a little like something a fan-writer would do when they felt the girl didn’t end up with the right guy at the end of the book. I have no doubt this is a gross overgeneralization and is probably not fair to the sequel, and maybe I’ll give in and read it eventually, but it just seems unnecessary to me.
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Aug 29, 2011 Kathleen Valentine rated it 5 of 5 stars

claire-obscure is both horrifying and mesmerizing and not for the feint of heart. It is the story of Claire, a lost young woman, who grew up in a bleak family situation, the only child of a cold, bitter mother and a father who was coming to the acceptance of his homosexuality. At 17 Claire is brutally raped and from that point on she lacks any sense of boundaries or self-regard. She is intelligent and lovely but utterly and completely lost. She dresses in vintage clothing from consignment shops,...more claire-obscure is both horrifying and mesmerizing and not for the feint of heart. It is the story of Claire, a lost young woman, who grew up in a bleak family situation, the only child of a cold, bitter mother and a father who was coming to the acceptance of his homosexuality. At 17 Claire is brutally raped and from that point on she lacks any sense of boundaries or self-regard. She is intelligent and lovely but utterly and completely lost. She dresses in vintage clothing from consignment shops, writes secret letters to Virginia Woolfe, and works for a predatory bisexual woman named Ann whose husband manages to disappear at the most inconvenient times.

Billie Hinton has an extraordinary gift for language. Her writing is both mellifluous and harsh. She writes the story of Claire's conflicted relationship with two men, equally strange and remote in their own unique ways, with mesmerizing detail and a sort of come-hither sensuality that beckons you in then leaves you standing at the closed door wondering what just happened. It is intoxicating because I found myself getting annoyed at Claire and her constantly self-destructive behavior but yet so intrigued I couldn't stop reading.

The two men who soon find their way into Claire's life are equally hypnotic. Finn Weston is an affluent medical student who invites her to live with him in a huge apartment but she soon discovers that, while she is attracted to him and he is intensely possessive and controlling of her, he is incapable of a sexual relationship with her, though he seems quite able to function with other women. Claire's jealousy notwithstanding Finn becomes intimate with Lucy who winds up mysteriously dead - though nothing can be proven to the contrary, all of Claire's friends suspect Finn.

Her other lover, Raoul Duras, is part of a Special Forces Delta team and spends his free time rescuing prostitutes and other lost women. Claire becomes his new fascination but, even though he grows to love her and longs for her to live with him, she cannot bear his long absences when he is on assignment and so she returns to Finn. With Finn she begins a descent into degradation with other men, emotional and eventually physical violence, and other humiliations but she is held hostage by his claims to need her, to be helpless without her. The story becomes painful at times as Claire goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between these two men.

This is a well-crafted, deeply penetrating study of three people all with their own separate wounds. I was somewhat struck by the fact that Raoul, the eventual hero of the story, had the last name Duras because the haunting style of story-telling Hinton employs was reminiscent to me of some of the stories of French writer Marguerite Duras, particularly The Ravishing of Lol Stein.

This is a very seductive book - not always easy to read but even harder to turn away from.(less)

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Sep 11, 2012 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: digital-read, own, traveling-book

WOW!! What a book!! I had never read a book by Billie Hinton, but I just loved this one! Claire really made me mad at some of the things she did and what she put up with, but I couldn't stop reading!! I had to know what was going to happen! At times, the book was very dark and I found myself holding my breath! What was she going to do next?? Make sure you read the sequel, Signs that Might be Omens to read more about Claire! Great job Billie!! I loved it!!

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Jun 13, 2012 Angelique Buckley rated it 2 of 5 stars

I don't think I would have finished this book if I had read it at any other point. The fact that it was the first one I started after the 50 Shades series is definitely what kept me in. It is the complete opposite to the 50 shades series. Every character seems damaged, and the author wants you to care about each one.... but I just didn't. Oh well.

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Aug 16, 2011 Vicki rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nook, 2011-reads

Claire Obscure is a complex novel about Claire, who was raped on when she was 17, and the implications of this act on the rest of her life. This is definitely the kind of book you read, shaking your head, wondering what the character is thinking. I was inclined to finish to see if there was some sort of redemption for her character. I did find some scenes to be redundant and the constant circle of her life stilted the plot for me.

3.5 Stars overall for me.

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Sep 05, 2012 Sarah (Workaday Reads) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012

This was a dark, depressing read. The story is quite heavy with a desperate feel to it. Even with this though, the ending had a glimmer of hope and the idea of overcoming darkness.

The characters were the biggest part of the story. Claire was frustrating, and at points I started to hate her. Finn was scary and dangerous, and was easy to hate. Raoul was the light of the story with his gentle understanding nature. He had his own dark side, he seemed much more controlled and “normal”.

While I didn’t...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Claudia Harrington rated it 3 of 5 stars

warning : strong sexual n some language.
A very well written tragic story that highlights the struggles of a rape victim. Characters are well developed and likeable.

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Jul 19, 2011 Hanane rated it 1 of 5 stars

Interestingly strange. read it in an afternoon

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Oct 07, 2012 Leslie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Weird, not sure why I even finished it.

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Aug 16, 2012 J Brooke rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing unsettling confusing beautiful

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Sep 29, 2011 Brandy Hunt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The main character in this book is compelling and so ... strong. She doesn't really come off as strong in the beginning, but as the novel goes on and more of her story is told, the strength of the main character as she tries to find love and acceptance kept me drawn in. Definitely, worth reading.

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May 28, 2012 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was good, but hard to read. I was wanting to shake this woman and say, 'what is wrong with you?!?!' It was a little like a train wreck. I'm glad I read it, though. The author had excellent prose.

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May 14, 2013 Lindsay is currently reading it

May 12, 2013 Rilee Jo rated it 3 of 5 stars

May 03, 2013 Adriana marked it as purchased

May 01, 2013 Heather Johnson moser marked it as to-read

Apr 30, 2013 Autumn Benson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Apr 30, 2013 Mike Moss marked it as to-read

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About Billie Hinton

Billie Hinton lives on a small horse farm in North Carolina with her husband, two teenagers, three horses, a painted pony, two miniature donkeys, five felines, and two Corgis.

She sees magic happen every single day.

More about Billie Hinton...

Books by Billie Hinton

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“What I know: every relationship is its own place, a country you live in for awhile and then you leave.” — 3 people liked it

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