Grange House: A Novel Paperback – June 1, 2001

This debut novel is so incredibly lyrical and poetic that I keep going back to it and just opening it up at a random page and reading a passage here and there. It's so evocative of Charlotte Bronte that I'm sure the author must have been influenced heavily by her, which would make sense anyway because Blake has a degree in Victorian literature. Indeed I believe her intent is to reinvent the classic Victorian novel in the tradition of Bronte or Radcliffe, and she really does an admirable job.This story is set in 19th century America, on the wind-swept coast of Maine, as 17-year old Maisie Thomas and her parents return to Grange House for their usual summer holiday. Although Maisie has been coming with her parents to Grange House every year all of her life, this is the year that the secrets of Grange House and of her own family begin to emerge, and Maisie makes some truly earth-shaking discoveries about herself and her family. On top of all that she must struggle mightily with her own conflicting desires as she approaches womanhood and tries to find a balance between the intellectual stimulation and experiences she craves and the conventions of the times in which she lives.The summer starts off inauspiciously when a pair of runaway lovers are found drowned in the sea nearby, one of them a serving girl from Grange House, and Maisie is drawn into the veiled, convoluted ramblings of Nell Grange, the woman to whose family the house once belonged and who still resides in the upper rooms of the house, roaming above the guests' heads like a restless shadow. A lone, sad grave in the woods hints at a history still untold, and Maisie soon learns that, willing or not, she will be the one to tell it.Don't let the young age of the protagonist put you off. This is not a young adult novel, although it would be perfectly appropriate for teens (in fact, if teens want to get a taste of what true, talented writing is (I won't revisit my unkind thoughts on certain people in the YA market calling themselves `writers' *cough cough*), I highly recommend it. At any rate, it is definitely a mainstream adult novel and I would compare it most closely to a modernized Jane Eyre in style and feel. Blake certainly has the gothic Victorian atmosphere nailed, complete with fog, rambling old houses, secrets and muttering old ladies in attics, but without the more overwrought, eye-rolling dramatics. Maisie is a protagonist any woman can be proud of, too - and that's saying something coming from me, because I generally dislike more female protagonists than I like!The sheer beauty of the language is more than worth the read, as well. It was like reading poetry in long form, or listening to a perfect melody. Blake spins out the story slowly, almost tortuously, and I was on tenterhooks until the very last page. Ask my husband! For the last 10 pages I literally had to get up and walk around the house, reading as I walked, because I was just so tensed up and tormented about how it was going to end! I'm such a sucker, but that only speaks to the talent of this new voice in fiction. I'm all over this Sarah Blake now and will be watching closely for her follow-up.

I read this on a friend's recommendation, and the first chapter came across as so contrived and precious, that it was difficult to get into. Sentences like: "Rather, you must take the night steamer from Boston, which deposits you at the Grange House pier before teatime." Or: "And though I watch for it, I am never prepared for the first sight of Grange House on its point, though I know the approach, and early learned to read where the slick black shale ledges of the shoreline turn to the white granite boulders marking the entrance to Middle Haven's harbor."Having read the whole novel, I now think that if only she'd just left off the first 3 paragraphs, the whole book could have gone a lot better. Oh well. The fact is, because of the strength of this friend's recommendation I gave the book another chance and by the third chapter was totally wrapped up in the gentle yet mysterious world of Grange House. So much, in fact, that I resented getting to my subway stop each morning and having to come back to the real world! I finally got so frustrated that I just took a few hours off and finished the darn thing!About all I feel safe telling you without giving away the story, is that the author weaves a gentle and mysterious story following a teenage girl who finds herself on an investigation of the lives lived in Grange House. It has elements of each of the Bronte novels, with a sprinkling of E.M. Forster. The author drew me in so far that as she lets us in on delightfully intimate Victorian letters and diaries of the characters, I felt guilty for infringing on their privacy! If you can ride out the precious language for a bit, and forgive the attempts to be original that produce a sentence like: "...for Mama's fear of the fog would dampen the spirit of the voyage, and Papa's cheery dismissal of that fear would only clamp shut her lips," the sensual and mysterious atmosphere will seduce you. If this is your kind of thing I highly recommend this book.

Excellent story well told

I enjoy 19 century novels and I enjoy a slow moving story that gathers momentum and atmosphere. The idea for the plot was a good one, yet I was abysmally bored by repetition and I didn't get to like any of the characters. All were irritating, specially the two main ones. I found myself skipping whole paragraphs and thinking 'blah blah blah ...'. Not that it was badly written, there were some beautiful words there but far too much description and a failure to make the characters believable. A pity. I wanted to like it.