When a couple chooses an ancient mansion, Pencraw Hall (aka Black Rabbit Hall) as their wedding venue, strange things come to light. Neither knows the history of the house--the Altons' story--yet Lorna remembers going to the house once while they were on holiday. For an unexplained reason, Lorna is drawn back to this house.
In a flashback, readers learn about another family that once lived in Black Rabbit Hall: a wild red-head American lady, her husband, and their children, Amber, Toby, Barney and Kitty. Black Rabbit Hall is a perfect haven for this troop, until a tragic accident changes everything.
After his mother's death, Toby becomes cool and distant. He becomes even more troubled when his father begins dating Caroline, an old flame. Amber feels torn between her loyalty towards her twin and her interest in Caroline's son, Lucian.
The children of the former Mrs. Alton clash with the new Mrs. Alton, especially since she insists on changing everything at Black Rabbit Hall. She despises the family traditions and thwarts them at every turn. She even takes down a beloved portrait of the former Mrs. Alton.
Decades later she offers her crumbling mansion to Lorna as a wedding venue. But why? If you love books about family secrets, unforgettable characters, and large estates in England, you'll love this book.
(continued)
This is a strange, magical realism story about endings–the end of
Jungleland, the end of the golden age of Hollywood, the end of the MGM
lion. it all plays out like a hallucination. I love that the lion never
gives the reporter anything.
Jungleland was a real place for Hollywood animals to live in Thousand Oaks, California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungleland_USA
Read the story,
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/tiger-id-wear-white/
The fact that Ree says, "Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered," tells a lot about her character. Hungry, her two brothers has just said they would ask a relative for meat. Kin are supposed to help each other.
Ree knows otherwise. She's had a hard life and is used to bitter disappointments. Yet she also exploits the fact that she's kin to many of the Ozark crank dealers.
Since her mother is enfeebled, Ree knows it's "all on her." She goes on an perilous pursuit to find the man that owes her
family something--her own father.
Woodrell invented the term country noir. Though it initially seems gritty and dark, this novel draws you into Ree's world. Though its not a pretty world, it's a taut, compelling narrative.
"Writing fiction is the strangest of professions. Here is a job in which your task each day is to listen to the voices of the people who don't exist and describe events that never were. It's the adult version of Let's Pretend."
Lisa Wingate, in the acknowledgements, The Sea Keeper's Daughters.
M.J. Rose's novel, Seduction, superbly moves back and forth in time on a remote island, Jersey Island, where Celtic artifacts are plentiful.
Half of the story is focuses on Victor Hugo's self-imposed exile to Jersey Island after his daughter's death. The other half of the story focuses on a present day woman, Jac L'Etoile, who is shooting a documentary on myths, Mythmakers.
Jac has suffered from hallucinations, mostly olfactory-driven, since she was a teenager. Jac finds herself reuniting with Theo, a man who had a dangerous hold over her.
While it starts off in a promising way, Seduction quickly becomes mired by numerous contemporary subplots.
There's a love triangle involving Theo, Ash, and Naomi that becomes more intricate when Jac visits Jersey Island. Then there's a subplot about a grandfather's strange obsession with a ouija board and his two grandchildren, Eva and Minera. The Celtic family who haunts Jac complicates matters still further.
While the subplots set in the present can be confusing, the subplots set in the nineteenth century are much more intriguing.
Rose's Victor Hugo storyline, which, as the author says in an end note, is partly true and partly fictionalized is the richest of the subplots. Hugo and is tempted to make a deal with a figure he calls the Shadow of Sepulchre.
Hugo's story is cleverly used to illuminate the present-day struggles of the Gaspards and the L'Etoiles. Some may disagree but I wish Rose had written solely about Victor Hugo and his circle.
Seduction was listed as Suspense Magazine's Book of the Year in 2013.
Suspense Magazine can be found at www.suspensemagazine.com
In Karen Joy Fowler's We Are Completely Beside Ourselves, the narrator begins in media res.
Rosemary is a well-educated, unreliable narrator. She tells readers she is in mourning because her sister disappeared seventeen years ago and her brother disappeared ten years ago.
In no way is We Are Completely Beside Ourselves a typical missing person story. There's a lot more at play. Rosemary's brother is a domestic terrorist and Rosemary's sister is a chimpanzee for starters. Her father is a psychologist who is keen on treating his children like the psychological subjects he is studying.
Tragic and compelling, this novel explores many tantalizing subjects such as the fallibility of memory, the notion of humanity, and the debilitating effect of family secrets.
For another book about a family's misadventures in animal experimentation, try We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge.
Two young people's live intersect when American bombers head for St. Malo, the last German stronghold.
Only a rare writer can develop such nuanced characters or create such beautiful moral complexities.
Wherever he goes, Werner hears his sister Jutta's sad question reverberating in his head: Is it right to do something only because everyone else is doing it?
Marie-Laure who is involved in the resistance with her Uncle Etienne wonders if they are the "good guys."
Neither knows the meaning of the numbers Etienne recites into the clandestine radio transmitter.
Tension builds as both Marie-Laure and Werner become trapped. Werner is trapped under a hotel, L'Abeille, when it is hit by Allied bombs. Marie-Laure is trapped in her great Uncle Etienne's secret room in the attic.
Sergeant Major Von Rumpel frantically searches the house for the gem, The Sea of Flames, the one Marie-Laure's father has sworn to protect.
Tired of hiding, Marie-Laure nearly gives herself away. Werner, who has managed to escape from his own ruin, decides to make things right in the only way he has left.
All the Light We Cannot See is a contemplative, well-researched novel.
Recently, All The Light You Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal For Excellence in Fiction.
