A Pattern of Roses

A Pattern of Roses struck me as old fashioned, and, at first, I couldn't determine why. The plot wasn't saccharine; the language wasn't stilted; the teenagers involved weren't Pollyanish or unrealistically well-behaved. What was it then? That's when I realized: the plot was completely unpredictable.

Too many of today's novels aimed at teenagers involve either the modern Cinderella fairy tale in which the bad boy -- or girl -- ends up with the handsome/beautiful prince/princess of the school or, otherwise, just another dystopian romance. In A Pattern of Roses, Timothy R. Ingram's parents wrench him out of London and his upper-class boarding school into the countryside. While there, Tim stumbles across first a cache of drawings and then show more the grave of a boy who lived in the house decades earlier, Thomas R. Inskip. Intrigued at the boy who shares his same initials, Tim begins to see the ghost of Tom, who teases Tim to find out about Tom's fate but then warns him, "But be careful it doesn't happen to you."

Tom Inskip died in 1910 just shy of his 17th birthday. Who was he? How did he die? And Tim, himself artistic, wonders, how did Tom, just a farm laborer's son, learn to draw as well as he did? And who is the captivating girl that Tom sketched just a day before he died?

A Pattern of Roses arouses more suspense than this synopsis would indicate; Tom's warning tinges the novel with a sense of foreboding. But it's not really a ghost story. Nor is it strictly a coming-of-age tale, although Tim grows up quite a bit. Nor is it really a romance, even though Tom falls utterly in love. Dirt-poor Tom falls for the willful and selfish Netty Bellinger, the upper-class girl who carelessly leads Tom to tragedy. She could easily have grown up into The Great Gatsby's Daisy Buchanan or the titular character of The Marriage of Maria Braun. The slim novel also explores the nature of destiny and of what constitutes a good life, but, again, it's not preachy. Somehow K.M. Peyton manages to weave all these threads together into a bittersweet tale that unfurls without becoming either predictable or maudlin. It's highly recommended. show less

K.M. Peyton writes her characters like she's drawing. her understanding of their interior lives is tender but not sentimental.