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The Uninvited Guests: A Novel by Sadie Jones
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The Uninvited Guests: A Novel (original 2012; edition 2012)

by Sadie Jones (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
8788024,216 (3.12)92
"One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honor of Emerald Torrington's twentieth birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savory survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor-and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief. The cook toils over mock turtle soup and a chocolate cake covered with green sugar roses, which the hungry band of visitors is not invited to taste. But nothing, it seems, will go according to plan. As the passengers wearily search for rest, the house undergoes a strange transformation. One of their number (who is most definitely not a gentleman) makes it his business to join the birthday revels. Evening turns to stormy night, and a most unpleasant parlor game threatens to blow respectability to smithereens: Smudge Torrington, the wayward youngest daughter of the house, decides that this is the perfect moment for her Great Undertaking"--From publisher description.… (more)
Member:MHanover10
Title:The Uninvited Guests: A Novel
Authors:Sadie Jones (Author)
Info:Harper (2012), Edition: First American Edition, 272 pages
Collections:Your library, Currently reading, Wishlist, To read, Read but unowned, Favorites
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The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones (2012)

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» See also 92 mentions

English (77)  Spanish (1)  Finnish (1)  All languages (79)
Showing 1-5 of 77 (next | show all)
A very enjoyable story about class, family, and doing whats right. None of these people are what you would call good, but they are doing what they think is right. From Charlotte, the matriarch of the family, to neglected Smudge, wanting to finish her "Great Undertaking". As the family and guests come together, realizing what their uninvited guests needs, they rediscover what is important to them.

The book is funny and tragic, with Smudge's Great Undertaking tying it all together - Its funny, witty, and gently says something about humanity, and that everyone needs kindness in their life. ( )
  TheDivineOomba | Mar 3, 2024 |
recommended by AP English listserv
  pollycallahan | Jul 1, 2023 |
Clumsy amalgam of ghost story, wicked look at British class-ism in the Edwardian era, and a soupҫon of grown-up 'Lord of the Flies', all bound up by an unlikely resolution. ( )
  LyndaInOregon | Jan 10, 2023 |
Really 2.5 stars. Good idea but characters weren't developed enough. ( )
  Ermonty | Dec 19, 2022 |
Downton Abbey meets psychological horror
( )
  Litrvixen | Jun 23, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 77 (next | show all)
How to describe The Uninvited Guests? Well, that's part of the fun. Sadie Jones' outstanding new novel starts out by offering mischievous echoes of Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs -- tempered, however, by a somewhat unsentimental vision of a decaying Edwardian England foolishly complacent in its sense of privilege and entitlement. But by the end, we have landed somewhere else: into a surrealistic universe reminiscent of filmmaker Luis Bunuel at his most unsettling. Also, let it be noted, into an eerily convincing ghost story...Further evidence that Sadie Jones is a stunningly original writer. The Uninvited Guests is her best book yet.
 
Downton Abbey meets The Others, anyone?..The result is a playful and rollicking tale, with writing that crackles with originality and wit. The supernatural element is not truly frightening and never threatens to dominate proceedings; it instead acts as a conduit for the main characters' journeys.
 
Full marks to them for publishing it in a way that accurately reflects its complexities. All the same, some of Sadie Jones's readers are likely to be a little bewildered....The novel is a ghost story, but disappointingly the ghosts are sad or sinister rather than scary...Stylish, witty and inventive it may be, but The Uninvited Guests is perhaps too much about the writer at play to satisfy Sadie Jones's hungry fans.
 
The Woman in Black meets Downton Abbey in this happy marriage of ghost story and country house dramaSadie Jones's highly entertaining third novel seems perfectly conceived to appeal to two current popular tastes – our fascination with the Edwardian country house and the revival of the English ghost story. The Uninvited Guests marks a stylistic departure for Jones too – on the surface the tone is lighter and more comic than her two previous novels...ones shows that she can turn her talent for storytelling to a more stylised form with a light and playful touch, and without compromising her sharp insights into the human heart.
 
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Their table was a board to tempt even ghosts
to pass the Styx for more substantial feasts.

Don Juan, Lord Byron
Dedication
For
Fred, Tabitha, Daisy
with love
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Since her marriage to Edward Swift, three years after the sudden death of her first husband Horace Torrington, Charlotte had changed her position at the breakfast table in order to accomodate her new husband's needs: specifically, aiding him in the spreading of toast and cutting of meat, owing to his having suffered the loss of his left arm at the age of twenty-three in an unfortunate encounter with the narrow wheels of a speeding gig, out of which he had fallen on the driveway of his then home in County Wicklow.
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"One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honor of Emerald Torrington's twentieth birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savory survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor-and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief. The cook toils over mock turtle soup and a chocolate cake covered with green sugar roses, which the hungry band of visitors is not invited to taste. But nothing, it seems, will go according to plan. As the passengers wearily search for rest, the house undergoes a strange transformation. One of their number (who is most definitely not a gentleman) makes it his business to join the birthday revels. Evening turns to stormy night, and a most unpleasant parlor game threatens to blow respectability to smithereens: Smudge Torrington, the wayward youngest daughter of the house, decides that this is the perfect moment for her Great Undertaking"--From publisher description.

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A party for Emerald Torrington's twentieth birthday is being prepared when an accident takes place and uninvited guests seek shelter at the falling apart manor.
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