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The narrator’s father most likely belongs to a tradition of men who do not believe that their wives are their equal. It’s not that that they might not love their wives but at no stage are they ever treated as being equals. If anything there appears to be a gender imbalance between the narrator’s father and his mother. Something again which would have been common place at the time the story was set. The narrator’s mother spends the majority of her time in the house while it is left to the men to milk the cows and work the land. Despite any gender imbalance that might exist the narrator’s mother is still happy to live and work on the farm. She believes her place is beside her husband regardless of the fact that he may not necessarily treat her as she should be treated. It is also interesting that Jim never sees any sense of imbalance between his parents. He is just happy to spend time with his mother. Something that is easier than working the land with his father. Pete’s ideas for renovation are overwhelming, and now that Jess has given up her own job working in a gallery in London, she finds herself on her own in the house a lot, failing to connect with the school mums, and losing her connection with Pete at the same time. And then she meets Eve… and the history of the house starts to unravel.
You soon grow to appreciate that several characters are living in the past and it’s not going to end well. In the second half there are some elements of subterfuge and sabotage with betrayal aplenty. Towards the end of part 1, Jim goes to the abandoned hill area. He finds a cave with adzes and also a human skull. What is the father’s attitude to the adzes? What does the author hint at now about ‘the people before’?
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So she is hugely relieved when she meets Eve, who works in a local gallery and Eve is warm and friendly towards her. The two women discover they have interests in common and Jess enjoys going for a coffee with her new friend. Jess and Pete Masters and their young children, Archie and Rose, have relocated to deepest Suffolk from darkest Walthamstow. They’ve bought Maple House and plan to renovate it completely. We meet them on Moving Day as Jess, in the first person, remembers the attempted burglary that had been the final straw for them living in London. Maple House was once grand but now this Arts and Crafts house lies neglected and in need of serious modernisation. It is what we might call “a project”.
This should be a twisty psychological thriller. Sadly, the title rather gives the game away. There is some tension right at the end, and the intrigue of how it al fits together, but the big reveal at the half way point will not surprise anyone. The boys go to the Second World War. The father sells the farm and moves closer to the cities. The boys return after war and Jim leaves for the University while the older boy joins his father on their new farm. Once during a discussion about coping with war, the elder brother says he had no happy memories to focus on during war. But Jim says, for him, their old farm was Te Wahiokoahoki, the place of happy return. The brother feels jealous that he could never feel that way. Lastly the settings. I loved the house. It was a character in itself. It was cleverly written to seem both spooky and not, depending on how you were looking at it. There was enough description to give you an idea of the house, but the main focus of the story was on the characters and their thoughts, feelings and actions. Jess as a protagonist felt desperately unhappy and I had a feeling the cold and creepy house would not help. Everything felt neglected, the house, the garden and even more so her character.Spark, in New Zealand the critical response was predominantly,and probably unfairly, negative. The eleven stories chronicledNew Zealand’s social history during the first half of the However, just as things are spiralling out of control for Jess, the perspective changes and we see a different side of things. This for me rather broke the tension the author had built up. I would really have liked the novel to have continued from Jess's point of view and although it does return to it at the end, the thread had broken somewhat. It’s littered with dark secrets and is twisted with such a tautness in the tension that you can almost hear it twang!!
The writing was gripping and tapped in to some of my fears. It was cleverly written from two different perspectives. So many different things happened, but they all tied up well. The writing was clear and kept me interested throughout.Mildred and Richard Loving answer questions at a press conference the day after the Supreme Court ruled in their favor in Loving v. Virginia. (Credit: Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) People in the village seem to have a strange look on their face when Jess mentions where she lives. There’s a history to the house, and Jess’s new friend Eve is happy to fill her in on the more interesting details. The synopsis: Jess and Pete buy a big old house in a remote spot in the country. It’s creepy, but what’s going on? (The book blurb is better but this is my version 😂) SUMMARY: Maurice Shadbolt is one of the towering figuresof New Zealand literature, winning numerous awards andaccolades for his work, much of which examines the historyof the country through narrative. The central characters inthis story are carving out a farming existence on the land, That said, I absolutely cannot fault the way in which the reader is drawn into the perspective of Jess and Eve, and the way that Charlotte Northedge controls the viewpoints to layer the interweaving strands of the story and build up the suspense whilst also leaving the major revelations for the very final chapters. Whilst the characters didn’t invite my empathy, I was still drawn into their respective stories and stayed with them to the end, which is testament to a tale well told!
As Eve and Peter draw closer together and shut Jess out, she begins to discover the truth about Maple House and who Eve really is…. Also Pete’s motivations, towards the end, didn’t convince me at all and he never really came alive as a character. But not everyone in Suffolk is welcoming. The locals know a secret about the Maple House, and soon, Jess realises they’ve made a huge mistake. Whilst I can’t say I warmed to any of the characters, North also does a reasonable job of making their (often very poor) life choices understandable. That said, the characters were – for me – the element of the book that I struggled most with. Although clearly traumatised and isolated, I found Jess to be a rather neurotic and self-absorbed narrator and, as such, couldn’t really bring myself to care about her difficulties fitting into her new home. Whilst I totally understand that good domestic suspense relies upon certain tropes, I also felt that the characters occasionally devolved into clichés: the neurotic suburban mother, the secretive husband, the creepy neighbour, the ‘so-nice-she’s-suspicious’ friend, the ‘unfriendly-villagers-who-hate-outsiders’ etc. As the novel progressed, I did find myself wanting Jess to act on her misgivings about her new life and make a better one for herself and her children but, without giving away any major spoilers for the ending, this never really comes to fruition which I found a little disappointing.A native of Connecticut, John Brown struggled to support his large family and moved restlessly from state to state throughout his life, becoming a passionate opponent of slavery along the way. After assisting in the Underground Railroad out of Missouri and engaging in the bloody struggle between pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansas in the 1850s, Brown grew anxious to strike a more extreme blow for the cause. Charlotte Northedge creates a riveting psychological study of self-deception and creeping dread.’ THE SUNDAY TIMES Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a review. US Representative Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn announces her entry for Democratic nomination for the presidency, at the Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York on January 25, 1972.
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