I started and finished A Sense of Direction in one evening; I couldn't really stop thinking about it, so I couldn't put it down. I found it...
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A beautifully crafted tale of an old English mansion physically decaying while Britain's class system also begins to fray following World War II. The Little Stranger presents itself as a gothic romance with all of the trappings thereof, yet the author, the more than capable Sarah Waters, has a few tricks up her sleeve.
Dr. Faraday is summoned to Hundreds Hall to tend to the ill housekeeper and is reminded of his previous visit, when he was all of ten years old. Through repeated interactions with the hall's residents, the Ayres family, Faraday manages to insinuate himself into their lives. Mrs. Ayres, the matriarch, and her children, 27 year old Caroline and 23 year old Roderick, live in the dilapidating estate house with their teenaged housemaid Betty. Faraday's mother had been a housekeeper in the hall years before. Mrs. Ayres' first daughter Susan died in the hall's nursery in childhood. From these elements, Waters brews an insightful, penetrating account of class tension, envy, jealousy, lovers' quarrels and, just possibly, a ghost or some other malevolent presence. The family are slowly driven mad by the hall, both mentally through the possible hauntings and physically by the shear enormity of the situation - trying to maintain an ungodly large estate on dwindling income.
The novel brilliantly evokes its time and place, give us characters to care about and places them in harm's way. The suspense is slowly, almost excruciatingly built up. The doctor remains skeptical, the family members slowly succumb to the madness the house induces. And in the end, the ghost is masterfully revealed causing the reader to reassess everything revealed previously. Creepy, lyrical and lonesome, The Little Stranger makes the perfect October's evening read.
A satisfactorily creepy little yarn, drenched in Southern idiosyncracies, Christopher Buehlman's debut mixes depression era racial and socioeconomic tropes with a slightly new take on an old monster movie favorite. Disgraced college professor who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder after serving in France during World War I runs off with the wife of a colleage, eventually landing in rural Georgia and a home he inherits from his aunt. Setting out to write a history of an ancestor who owned a plantation nearby and was notorious for his brutal treatment of his slaves, the professor stumbles across some bizarre and macabre scenes in the backwoods.
Take one hypercontrolling mother, a depressed, Parkinson-stricken father, and three adult children who are, in turn, depressed and materialistic, juvenile to a fault, and unsure of their place in the world. Add a satirical wit that aims for, and often hits, the jugular. Throw in enough observations on what "family" means at the end of the 20th century in America and you get this brilliantly realized, devastatingly funny, yet tender at times, account of the Lambert family of the fictional Upper Midwestern city of St. Jude. Never before has Tolstoy's famous line from Anna Karenina, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," so riotously applied. It's a coming-of-middle-and-old-age story. I highly recommend this for those adults coming to realize how similar they are to their parents and anyone seeking a hysterical portrait of an American family.
Tana French has outdone herself with this novel of Irish family dysfunction and murder. Her prior works, In the Woods and The Likeness, were more than simple murder mysteries. Each book explored psychological dynamics most other thriller authors only hint at. Rob Ryan, the lead detective in In the Woods, was hiding a secret from his superiors, his partner, everyone he knew; Cassie Maddox in The Likeness suppresses her own persona to become a murder victim who returns to the scene of the crime as an attempted murder victim - the ruse designed to ferret out the real killer amongst a group of college students.
Now, in Faithful Place, Frank Mackey, who managed Maddox's undercover operation in The Likeness, is front and center and what a show it is. When Frank was 19 he and his girlfriend made plans to elope to England but on the night they were to meet, Rosie never made it. Frank thought he had been dumped and so never returned to his family's home and never went to England. For the past 20+ years, through marriage, childbirth and divorce, throughout his career as a police officer, he has assumed Rosie was living in England without him. The novel is set in motion when Rosie's suitcase is found in an abandoned dwelling on the street where they were to meet.
We soon meet the Mackey family and the other residents of Faithful Place, a dead-end street in a hardscrabble section of Dublin. Traditionally a neighborhood of working poor and families on the dole, college students and yuppies are beginning to move in as the Irish economy continues its amazing ascent begun in the 1990s. The Mackey patriarch spends most of his days in a drunken haze, pausing only to yell at his adult children when they visit and at his wife. This is better than the past when he physically beat them. The reason Mackey never went back to his family is obvious and he blames them for Rosie dumping him all those years ago.
Now, drawn back to the Place to unofficially investigate the suitcase, Frank is forced to confront the family he thought he was done with.
French offers brilliant descriptions of small disagreements blossoming into full-on rows, accounts of growing up poor, and scathing social criticisms of Irish society and politics. This is her best novel yet and deserves to win many accolades.
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The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Darin, January 2, 2012
A beautifully crafted tale of an old English mansion physically decaying while Britain's class system also begins to fray following World War II. The Little Stranger presents itself as a gothic romance with all of the trappings thereof, yet the author, the more than capable Sarah Waters, has a few tricks up her sleeve.Dr. Faraday is summoned to Hundreds Hall to tend to the ill housekeeper and is reminded of his previous visit, when he was all of ten years old. Through repeated interactions with the hall's residents, the Ayres family, Faraday manages to insinuate himself into their lives. Mrs. Ayres, the matriarch, and her children, 27 year old Caroline and 23 year old Roderick, live in the dilapidating estate house with their teenaged housemaid Betty. Faraday's mother had been a housekeeper in the hall years before. Mrs. Ayres' first daughter Susan died in the hall's nursery in childhood. From these elements, Waters brews an insightful, penetrating account of class tension, envy, jealousy, lovers' quarrels and, just possibly, a ghost or some other malevolent presence. The family are slowly driven mad by the hall, both mentally through the possible hauntings and physically by the shear enormity of the situation - trying to maintain an ungodly large estate on dwindling income.
The novel brilliantly evokes its time and place, give us characters to care about and places them in harm's way. The suspense is slowly, almost excruciatingly built up. The doctor remains skeptical, the family members slowly succumb to the madness the house induces. And in the end, the ghost is masterfully revealed causing the reader to reassess everything revealed previously. Creepy, lyrical and lonesome, The Little Stranger makes the perfect October's evening read.
Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
Darin, September 24, 2011
A satisfactorily creepy little yarn, drenched in Southern idiosyncracies, Christopher Buehlman's debut mixes depression era racial and socioeconomic tropes with a slightly new take on an old monster movie favorite. Disgraced college professor who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder after serving in France during World War I runs off with the wife of a colleage, eventually landing in rural Georgia and a home he inherits from his aunt. Setting out to write a history of an ancestor who owned a plantation nearby and was notorious for his brutal treatment of his slaves, the professor stumbles across some bizarre and macabre scenes in the backwoods.The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Darin, September 24, 2011
Take one hypercontrolling mother, a depressed, Parkinson-stricken father, and three adult children who are, in turn, depressed and materialistic, juvenile to a fault, and unsure of their place in the world. Add a satirical wit that aims for, and often hits, the jugular. Throw in enough observations on what "family" means at the end of the 20th century in America and you get this brilliantly realized, devastatingly funny, yet tender at times, account of the Lambert family of the fictional Upper Midwestern city of St. Jude. Never before has Tolstoy's famous line from Anna Karenina, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," so riotously applied. It's a coming-of-middle-and-old-age story. I highly recommend this for those adults coming to realize how similar they are to their parents and anyone seeking a hysterical portrait of an American family.Faithful Place by Tana French
Darin, January 16, 2011
Tana French has outdone herself with this novel of Irish family dysfunction and murder. Her prior works, In the Woods and The Likeness, were more than simple murder mysteries. Each book explored psychological dynamics most other thriller authors only hint at. Rob Ryan, the lead detective in In the Woods, was hiding a secret from his superiors, his partner, everyone he knew; Cassie Maddox in The Likeness suppresses her own persona to become a murder victim who returns to the scene of the crime as an attempted murder victim - the ruse designed to ferret out the real killer amongst a group of college students.Now, in Faithful Place, Frank Mackey, who managed Maddox's undercover operation in The Likeness, is front and center and what a show it is. When Frank was 19 he and his girlfriend made plans to elope to England but on the night they were to meet, Rosie never made it. Frank thought he had been dumped and so never returned to his family's home and never went to England. For the past 20+ years, through marriage, childbirth and divorce, throughout his career as a police officer, he has assumed Rosie was living in England without him. The novel is set in motion when Rosie's suitcase is found in an abandoned dwelling on the street where they were to meet.
We soon meet the Mackey family and the other residents of Faithful Place, a dead-end street in a hardscrabble section of Dublin. Traditionally a neighborhood of working poor and families on the dole, college students and yuppies are beginning to move in as the Irish economy continues its amazing ascent begun in the 1990s. The Mackey patriarch spends most of his days in a drunken haze, pausing only to yell at his adult children when they visit and at his wife. This is better than the past when he physically beat them. The reason Mackey never went back to his family is obvious and he blames them for Rosie dumping him all those years ago.
Now, drawn back to the Place to unofficially investigate the suitcase, Frank is forced to confront the family he thought he was done with.
French offers brilliant descriptions of small disagreements blossoming into full-on rows, accounts of growing up poor, and scathing social criticisms of Irish society and politics. This is her best novel yet and deserves to win many accolades.