Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... La custode (edition 2008)by Melanie Wallace, Eva Kampmann
Work InformationThe Housekeeper by Melanie Wallace
I Could Live There (174) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Having read Wallace's new book, The Girl in the Garden, I went looking for other books and found this one. IF I had read it first I would NEVER have gone NEAR her newer book. I found this book just plain grizzly!! Although I am totally impressed with Wallace's ability to provide absolutely vivid descriptions of the wilderness, it is a truly horrific story and I was very sorry I kept reading it, hoping that it was somehow going to turn out in the end to be worth the effort---it was not! ( ) I have never read a book like this one. Imagine the absolute least amount of material, emotional, and physical support a person needs to remain alive, now cut that amount in half, now cut it in half again. Would you still be alive? Would you still be human? How long could you continue to be either one of those things? What if you do manage to barely cling to life, maybe even to humanity and deliberate evil is added to the mix. Can you still hold on? There's winter and not winter, evil and not evil, life and not life, beauty and not beauty, connection and not connection. I would say this is maybe the least American novel I could imagine, so I was not surprised to see that Wallace divides her time living in Greece and France. I would recommend this book to anyone strong enough to read about determination in the face of primal life forces. I read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks today that fit well with this book: Kitchenette Building We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in, and gray. "Dream" mate, a giddy sound, not strong Like "rent", "feeding a wife", "satisfying a man". But could a dream sent up through onion fumes Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall, Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms, Even if we were willing to let it in, Had time to warm it, keep it very clean, Anticipate a message, let it begin? We wonder. But not well! not for a minute! Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it. Jamie could still let that dream rise, even though she couldn't yet formulate it, even though she didn't have the room or even the lukewarm water. This attribute made her attractive to some, repulsive to others. And how long could she retain the ability in the face of such deprivation? Sadly I must say I didn't really enjoy this book. There are some nice descriptions of the bleak landscape of its setting, but too much violence for me. Actually, this book is mainly long stretches of nothing happening punctuated with occasional murders. Also, the author has chosen not to use speech marks, which I find extremely wearing to read. The ending made me laugh, although I don't think it was supposed to. **SPOILER ALERT** I wasn't overly fond of The Housekeeper when I was nearing the end. The writing was beautiful and stark, but the characters were shallow and hard to connect with, and there were some very disturbing and chaotic undertones to the story that I didn't care for. But none of that mattered when two pages from the end EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN THE STORY FELL THROUGH A CRACK IN THE ICED UP RIVER AND DIED. Well, that's not entirely true, one of them got to watch the whole thing happen and then wander off. That ending sucked, folks. There is no other way to paint it. And in a book that I was on the fence about anyway....it made me feel like the entire read was a complete waste of time. no reviews | add a review
Awards
A chilling, literary novel about a nomadic young woman who becomes tangled in the stories of her past and the search for a wild boy. Teenage runaway Jamie Hall – entrapped by circumstance and poverty – seems incapable of escaping the mountain-and-valley watershed that was the birthplace of her maternal grandparents. Working as a housekeeper for Margaret, a retired photographer who leaves behind a pictorial chronicle of the valley’s history, Jamie finds herself trapped in a town–and amongst a group of locals–unable to shake the relentless grip of the past. There’s an ancient postmaster who lives through his memories of Jamie’s grandmother, the woman he loved but who was never his. There’s Galen, an ex-con who falls in love with Jamie, and who finds himself threatened by Harlan, a childhood friend who has become a murderous poacher. And then there’s the wild boy tied to a tree. When Jamie sets him free, she unintentionally involves both Galen and Harlan in a fatal chase and unleashes a force of evil that will haunt her for the rest of her life. With an unforgettable cast of characters and gorgeous, piercing prose,The Housekeeperis at once a poetic meditation on landscape and a page-turning thriller. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |