Gail Godwin

On the outside, Jane Clifford has everything going for her. She is a respected professor, teaching Women in Literature (the British section) at a Midwestern college, but secretly Jane is a neurotic mess. She lives vicariously through the beloved characters of literature; every character is either a friend or a mentor or a villain. She gets all of her advice from these imaginary people. Poor Jane doesn't know how to relate to people in the real world, especially her own mother. The death of show more her stylish grandmother sends Jane down upsetting memory lanes especially when she returns to her childhood home for the funeral.
To make matters worse, Jane's love life revolves around a married man who has no plans to leave his wife. Gabriel patronizes Jane by being controlling and condescending and like a good girl, she puts up with it. He gently admonishes and corrects and chides. Pay attention to the language Godwin uses about Gabriel and his hands. He is always "trapping" Jane's hand in his own. He holds all the cards because he is the married one.
In the end I didn't know whether to cheer on Jane or cry for her. show less

I really liked Godwin's Flora, which was one of those quietly devastating sort of books that's way more powerful because it avoids histrionics. Grief Cottage is similarly quiet, but never really got off the ground for me. A boy is orphaned, goes to live with his bohemian great aunt by the sea, discovers an abandoned cottage where a family supposedly died during a hurricane decades ago, sees a ghost (kind of?). There were parts of this book I really enjoyed, like the relationship the orphaned show more boy forms with an elderly neighbor lady and (oddly) the passages about sea turtle hatchlings the town helps out every year, but otherwise this was sort of meh for me. Not enough of a ghost story, not enough of a human story... show less

Godwin's newest novel is skillfully written, full of intrigue, and nothing like what I expected. The unique narrator provides the reader with a structure of foreshadowings that propel the story, as well as creating an ongoing grim anticipation for the reader. Unfinished Desires is one large story made up of numerous parallel storylines, which can be confusing when poorly done. Fortunately, Godwin's many characters and their tales are equally engrossing, which allowed me to enjoy each passage show more without rushing through to the next, favoring one plot thread over the rest. I savored the novel and it's beautiful imagery, and will surely read another of Godwin's works in the future (this being my first).

Many thanks to LT and Random House for the chance to be an Early Reviewer of this creative, interesting novel! show less

Character's inner ruins lay concealed, their grief diverted by obsessions and addictions, in Gail Godwin's novel Grief Cottage.

After the death of his single mother, eleven-year-old Marcus' only living family member, his Aunt Charlotte, becomes his guardian. While his depressed aunt spends her days in her art studio, painting and sipping bottles of red wine, Marcus uses his honed homemaking skills to keep the beach front cottage spic and span, making himself useful, as he did for his working show more mom. Marcus is also an expert caretaker, responsible and useful; his own needs are shunt aside, his own grief and doubt internalized.

The rest of his day Marcus walks the South Carolina beach to visit the deserted house locals call Grief Cottage. Marcus is obsessed to know more about the tragedy that took place there. A family vacationing at the cottage disappeared in the 1954 hurricane, the parents searching for their missing son. How could no one have recorded the family's name? Marcus visits the empty shell of a house daily, 'courting' the ghost of the boy who appears to him.

"Marcus feels the pain of others," said Aunt Charlotte, "even when they're dead and gone."

Charlotte's cottage is filled with grief. Charlotte tries to escape the memory of her 'devil' father who at age five began to 'poison' her. It is 'the good old family horror story', Greek or Shakespearian in nature. Marcus is burdened by his lonely childhood, shamed when his one friend discovered he shared a bed with his mother. In a rage, Marcus beat the boy up. He underwent counseling and then his mother left her job and they moved-- to worse conditions--then his mother was killed in a car accident.

In the galley reader's note, Godwin writes that she was inspired by stories of ghosts whose arrival coincides with a mental crisis, tales grounded in 'daily life,' but which 'leaves a window for the possibility of a reality we haven't discovered yet."

"People see what they want to see. Or imagine they saw. "

For a lonely eleven-year-old child in a new place, deep in grief, imagining a ghostly friend is not a far stretch. I had Homer the Ghost to keep me company when we moved the year I turned eleven. I knew he was imaginary. Marcus has to work to keep his 'realities' separate, the duties he owed to his aunt and to the ghost boy, to keep his sanity. It makes him feel even more isolated, for who would understand?

I was compelled by this story to read far into the night. Even the supporting characters are sympathetic, full and real. There is a climatic revelation, and life goes on as it had, Marcus and his aunt supporting each other. And at the very end, a moment of grace returns Marcus something he had lost and gives him something he had long searched for.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. show less