The House of Velvet and Glass

I loved Katherine Howe’s first novel “The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane” and was thrilled to hear that she had published a second novel! “The House of Velvet and Glass” is a splendidly woven tale of one family and the effects that past events/experiences has on the remaining family members. It entwines such historical occurrences as the sinking of the Titanic, the growing intrigue of séances, the torpedoing of the Lusitania, and World War I. Howe’s writing is enthralling and her descriptions draw you into the pages, however I found the storyline in this novel a bit lacking when compared to her first. Maybe she was trying too hard after such success on her first publication . . . or maybe she was just putting too much show more into one book – I don’t really know. I can say that it was a difficult book to put down and that while I wasn’t quite sure where she was going, I did enjoy the ride. show less

What’s left of the Allston family of Boston’s Back Bay is still reeling from the loss of Matriarch Helen and youngest child Eulah who had the misfortune of being on the Titanic. Each remaining member is dealing with the loss and going about life in their own way. Sybil, the oldest has taken over running the house and furthering her spinster lifestyle, but it’s in the séance parlor of Miss Dee where she finds the most solace and closest to her lost family as she deals with the guilt she can’t seem to shed and knows that speaking of it to her stoic father Captain Lan Allston does no good. In the midst of all this it seems her younger brother Harlan has gotten himself kicked out of school, returned home only to get into deeper show more trouble. The troubles with Harlan also brings back an old family friend of the Allston’s, Benton Derby who was once much more to Sybil than just a friend and who is now in the position as a professor to help Harlan back in the classroom and out of trouble, but the complications continue as Harlan’s paramour Dovie arrives on the scene. Sybil joins forces with Ben to help her wayward brother but also turns to her faith in the occult for succor which has she and Ben butting heads. And as they seek answers journeying through the mystical psychic world they find only more questions and deeper puzzles, and some of those puzzles are leading back to a deep dark family secret.
Katherine Howe burst on the literary scene with her debut novel The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and now brings us another blockbuster in The House of Velvet and Glass. She took me on board the Titanic, through the streets of Shanghai and the elegant and eclectic Boston of early 20th century America and as she did so I could see in my mind’s eye the scenes, the people and the happenings around them. As she spun her tale of misfortune and of catastrophe she showed me also the lengths that we will go to find comfort, she showed me the strength it takes to go on in the light of loss and she once again went into the preternatural world and did it with aplomb. She introduced me to some amazing characters that will stay with me for a long time with Sybil, Ben and the Captain leading the cast but not foreshadowing her co-stars, Harlan and Dovie and finally her cameo appearances by Helen and Eulah and we can’t forget Baiji. Her narrative is all reminiscent of the era she’s portraying and done beautifully and vividly expressive with such attention to detail that her research is obvious not only in the industrial miracles of the times but also the costume and attitudes brought out in her characters. And finally this is a love story, of familial love and romantic love, it’s a story of the right thing to do in the face of opposition and the love of oneself.
If you’re a fan of historical literature, family drama, or just a great story this is a novel you should read. If you like just a little woo-woo with your big dose of reality you’ll also find what you’re looking for between the pages of this novel.
Be sure and check out my Q&A with author Katherine Howe http://thereadingfrenzy.blogspot.com/2012/04/q-with-katherine-howe-and-review-of... show less

Sibyl Allston spends her days mourning the loss of her younger sister and mother whose lives ended tragically when the Titanic sank in April of 1914. The two were returning home from a grand European tour and their loss devastates the family. As the oldest daughter and most responsible of the Allston children, Sibyl takes over as the woman of the house but doesn’t have the backbone to garner any respect --- not from the house staff or family acquaintances. Accepting of the fact that she will most likely remain single, she does what she can to make her life, and her father’s, as normal and comforting as she can considering their loss.

When Sibyl’s brother Harley is kicked out of Harvard under circumstances that he won’t discuss show more --- everyone assumes it has something to do with a young woman --- her already heartbreaking and complicated life gets one more added layer of sadness. Her father and brother can’t be in the same room together without fighting, and after a particularly stressful time, Harley leaves. Later, a young woman shows up at the house covered in blood with news that Harley has been severely injured. While waiting at the hospital for news on Harley, Benton Derby, Sibyl’s former love --- a man she still has great feelings for --- shows up wanting to help throwing not only Sibyl, but the whole family, into a tail spin.

Sibyl, a devotee of fortune telling, begins to find solace in the art hoping that a medium used by her mother will help her find comfort in the memories of the past and answers about the future. What she doesn’t understand yet is her own gift in the art and the affect it will have on her life and her family members.

What Katherine Howe does very well is capture a moment in time. Boston of 1915 is a rich setting and she doesn’t let any of the details slip. The book moves around in time thanks to the fortune telling aspect, but the characters pull the story back reminding you where the story is taking place. Sibyl is a particularly poignant character looking for comfort and acceptance from her father but also from a deceased mother that lost hope in her and placed all her dreams of a good marriage match on her younger sister. Sibyl’s a sad person but so wrapped up in handling the necessities of her day that she hides most of her feelings hoping others won’t see her hurting. Her need for comfort, acceptance, and assurance land her in a dangerous place.

While I did enjoy certain aspects of the fortune telling in this story --- it was a popular pastime at this point in history --- it did make parts of the story feel slightly disjointed. It’s a nice touch but is also a bit heavy handed making the story feel like it is coming and going at the same time.

This is Howe’s second book following The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. She’s a writer more than willing to immerse her readers in history and if you enjoy historical fiction, Howe is a writer to look to. show less

Warning: contains spoilers

I love an author who’s not afraid to kill off some of her good guys, and Katherine Howe kills off not one, not two, but three at the end of this novel. Yes, you will need that box of Kleenex, but don’t let that stop you from reading The House of Velvet and Glass. It’s a good cry and you’ll enjoy it.

The novels two main protagonists are Lannie, a young sailor visiting Shanghai for the first time during the middle of the 19th century, and his daughter Sybil, navigating the world of Boston society during the early 20th century. Interspersed with these two are Lannie’s wife, Helen, and Lannie’s other daughter, Eulah, who are aboard the doomed cruise liner Titanic. Sometimes a novel with various timelines show more can be a challenge, but Katherine Howe handles these deftly. Each time the story shifted I felt both reluctant to let the one I’d been reading go, and eager to dive into the new thread. Not an easy task for a writer to pull off.

The old world she creates of sailors and of China are filled with so much atmosphere I could practically smell the century, from the exotic perfumes and blood of a brothel visit that turns bad, to the smoke permeated darkness of an opium den, the descriptions are well-imagined and evocative.

Nothing in Salem approached this wall for age and majesty, which protected old Shanghai from the incursions of the new. There were a few old-fashioned houses, of course, inhabited by the poorer people, crowded together in their darkness and dampness, the stench of two hundred years’ worth of mice and sweat and woodsmoke and whitewash. But when New England was still a wilderness, this wall was already over a hundred years old. Lannie felt small and insignificant before it, a passing rill on an otherwise unbroken stream of time.

Boston is one of my favorite towns, having lived just forty-five minutes north of the place for ten years during the 90’s. It’s history-soaked and unique, as all great cities are, and this writer captures the atmosphere and society of it, the university in particular, in tiny, nuanced glimpses, as if seen from the window of a passing carriage.

She makes use of the upper-crust slang and body language of the early twentieth century swells with an aptitude that must have meant hours of research, and yet it comes off as seamlessly natural in the characters’ internal thoughts.

His body was compact and muscled, slightly the wrong shape to look fashionable in suits. His shoulders were too broad. There was something unrefined about Benton’s body, though that was offset by the sharpness of his mind. A psychologist, that’s what Sibyl said he was. So Benton Derby liked to study crazy people. Well, bully for him. Harlan had better things to do with his time.

The character of Sybil is an anorexic, which struck me as odd upon first encountering it, since I tend to think of the disorder as a modern one. The fact is introduced subtly, and not stated outright or made too much of, at first, which went a long way toward making me buy into it as a reader. And by the middle of the novel Sybil’s illness is so much a part of and the result of her circumstances: being thrown over and left behind by the man she hoped to marry, which has consigned her to the outer fringes of society and spinsterhood, and the tragic deaths of her mother and sister when the Titanic sinks—that it seems it couldn’t have been otherwise. The world had slid out of the emotionally locked down Victorian era, (and in fact, Sybil, an anachronism of sorts, still wears a corset – unlike the free-thinking Dovie, her brother’s lover) and the Great Depression spawned the skinny, headband wearing, jitterbugging Flapper, so it’s entirely plausible that a young, thwarted woman might resort to self-depravation, not to make herself thinner, perhaps, but to exert some perceived control. And that is exactly how she is portrayed. Despite being thin as a junkie, (which she actually becomes for a time) Sybil’s character is fully three-dimensional.

The author manages quite a feat with Lannie – or Harlan, as he becomes known as an adult. She makes the reader love him as a young boy, experiencing tragedy in the form of his new friend being killed on his first night in Shanghai, then she leads the reader to perceive him as a hard man in adulthood, where he hides himself away in his darkened den with Baiji, his mysterious Macaw. Though not entirely devoid of kindness – he’s gentle with Sybil, after all – he rules over his children’s lives like an autocrat, even to denying his apparently mugged son the relief of a shot of morphine while Harlan (Jr.) is recovering in the hospital. By the middle of the novel the reader wants to understand how the young Lannie we first come to know, becomes this secretive, closed off man.

I will only say this: things are not always what they seem in this novel—and you will not be disappointed.

This writer’s strengths: Where to begin! Katherine Howe is a writer’s writer. She writes perfectly crafted sentences that make one read them a second time, on occasion, just for the pleasure of them. Her punctuation and word choice are unobtrusive and lovely, making her easily accessible to any reader. Her descriptions are precise and vivid, particularly her character descriptions. Her characters are well rounded – even the ones we only meet briefly, like Johnny.

Who will enjoy this book? Any reader who likes a page turning read and tight plot with surprises, but also likes a bit of leisurely historical description. Readers who like a mix of commercial and lite-literary. History buffs who are fans of the era.

The House of Velvet and Glass is 407 pages. I found one dropped word, on page 349 of the hardback, the word ‘to’. Otherwise this novel is flawless in every way that matters. I very much enjoyed her first novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which I read a few years ago and recall recommending to friends, but this novel is even better. show less

Katherine Howe’s second novel, The House of Velvet and Glass, inserts the reader into the upper-crust society of Boston in the 1910s. When her mother and younger sister perish on the Titanic, Sybil Allston is left to forge ahead with the requirements as set by society in her new role as head of the household and representative of the family among her set, while her brother must also live up to the expectations as set by his deceased mother and demanding father. Trapped into roles with which neither one is comfortable, each opts to assuage their grief in ways that become most disastrous. Occurring at the peak of Spiritualism and drawing on real historical figures and events as much as possible, The House of Velvet and Glass explores show more the depths to which a person will go in order to free themselves from the ties that bind.

The biggest strength of The House of Velvet and Glass is its writing. Ms. Howe's lush descriptions and pinpoint characterizations create vividly clear, precise imagery and utterly realistic characters. The setting envelops the reader with its gorgeous prose, while the story unfolds with stunning clarity as the background becomes another character in its own right. It is as if the reader becomes a contemporary within the posh world of wealthy Boston in the late 1910s.

Plotwise, The House of Velvet and Glass is all over the place. It is an amalgamation of the tragic story of the sinking of the Titanic and the impact on the loved ones of the lost, a commentary on Spiritualism, a lesson on growing beyond one’s boundaries set by tradition, society, and family, and a warning about the dangers of becoming an addict. The reader is taken from Boston in 1914 to onboard the Titanic on the night of its sinking to Singapore in 1886, and the links between the three time periods is never truly apparent until the end. At many points throughout the novel, a reader will struggle to discern towards what point Ms. Howe is driving her audience.

In spite of all the issues with the plot, The House of Velvet and Glass draws in a reader and holds one’s interest. The plot itself might be confusing as it struggles to decide whether to be a character-driven novel or a plot-driven one, but Ms. Howe’s imageries more than make up for the plot’s inadequacies. Combined with its highly flawed characters and mystical elements, The House of Velvet and Glass is another excellent modern Gothic novel worth reading.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to Hyperion Voice for my review copy! show less

Katherine Howe's second novel, The House of Velvet and Glass (Voice, 2012) is, like her first (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane), a work of historical fiction set in New England, with flashback scenes aplenty and a few supernatural elements in the mix. This time, though, the main story takes place in the spring of 1915, as war rages in Europe and the memory of the loss of Titanic is still very fresh.

The Allston family of Beacon Street lost its matriarch, Helen, and youngest daughter, Eulah, when that ship went down (we meet the two of them in occasional interludes, as Eulah strikes up a shipboard friendship with Harry Widener). Carrying on at home are eldest daugther Sibyl, her father Lan (a shipping magnate) and her brother Harlan, show more whose days at Harvard seem to be numbered.

Howe limns the Boston of 1915 quite nicely, capturing the tensions between the traditional way of life for Brahmin families in the Hub with the technological and societal changes being ushered in during the early years of the 20th century. Sibyl's attraction to séances and spiritualism in the aftermath of the deaths of her mother and sister plays a key role in the plot of the book, and the fierce debates about those fields are represented (briefly, of course).

While there were some parts of the novel that moved a bit slowly, and some loose ends that I thought didn't quite come together, overall I liked it ... and the few twists at the end were nicely done. show less

A well written book with three story lines alternating through it. It all revolves around the Allston family of Boston: Captain Harlan, who made his fortune on the sea, his wife and youngest daughter who perished on the Titanic, and his two remaining children, Sibyl and Harlan. The family is struggling after the fateful event and through a series of flashbacks entwined with their everyday life, we get a glimpse of the impact it has had on them. Very well researched and Katherine Howe spins a provocative and magical tale.