Review by Booklist Review
In the cellar of their old Vermont house, once a resort hotel, Greta and Ned Dene discover a cache of late-nineteenth-century letters revealing a relationship between Lucinda Dearborn, the hotel's owner, and a famous expatriate writer called simply O. Greta has a secret of her own. She is mourning the death of Crain, her lover since before her marriage to Ned and, she believes, the father of her child. As the story progresses, more secrets are uncovered. Greta has not been open with Ned about an incident during her school days involving a clergyman who befriended them both, and Crain's widow has kept hidden a crucial fact about her marriage. The writer O. is clearly patterned after Henry James, and the way Kramer fashions her tale will remind many of James' style. As the story goes on, the links between all the various elements grow more apparent, but not all the pieces quite fit together. Those who are intrigued by the interweaving of past and present may also enjoy A. S. Byatt's Possession. --Mary Ellen Quinn
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A former resort hotel in the rolling hills of Vermont links past and present entanglements in this ambitious and richly imagined tale of romantic intrigue. For 15 years, the Hotel Thrush Hollow has been the summer home of Greta and Ned Dene, who now discover love letters written to former owner Lucinda Dearborn, a beautiful, self-styled faith healer who inherited the place from her father in the 1870s. Lucinda's admirer is none other than the celebrated expatriate novelist O. It falls to Ned, a biographer, to decide whether he should reveal the human side of a writer who's known for his icy reserve. In reality, O.'s prudish refusal to enter into a physical relationship with Lucinda propelled her into the arms of a married neighbor with whom she sustained a secret passion of long duration. While Ned puzzles over his subject, Greta mourns the death of her longtime lover, Lars Crain, and considers revealing to Ned that their son Henry was actually fathered by Lars. Intending to confess all, Greta invites Lars's widow to Thrush Hollow, but when Julia Crain divulges a shocking secret of her own, Greta changes her mind. Given the heady mix that's gone beforeincluding arranged marriages, ecclesiastical scandals, stigmata and faith healingsthe ending seems pedestrian: Ned remains clueless, Henry returns from camp, Julia and Greta bond. Yet Kramer (Rattlesnake Farming) is a gifted stylist; her vivid characters (especially the Henry James caricature O.) and evocative prose propel the reader through the complexities of two distinct yet connected plots. She breathes life into two passionate women whose lives, though separated by a century, are intriguingly mirrored. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Greta Dene, a professional horse trainer, is emotionally swamped by secrets old and new. Her ill-concealed grief over the death of her longtime lover has put her marriage in jeopardy. Her 14-year-old son's parentage similarly threatens her fragile ties to her hapless husband. And her frightening past is literally knocking at the door. But Greta's messy love triangle parallels another. The Denes occupy Thrush Hollow, a former resort hotel in Vermont, run in the 1870s by one Lucinda Dearborn. The Denes uncover a cache of letters written by an unnamed famous expatriate American writer (Henry James, perhaps?), which hint at his jealousy of a suspected rival for Miss Dearborn's affections. Dickensian coincidences abound in Kramer's (Rattlesnake Farming, LJ 10/15/92) tangled tale. Readers who question prickly Greta's appeal to the people in her life will find themselves compelled to keep turning pages for the answer. A good book-discussion choice.Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Marital infidelity, religious mystery, and the ambiguities of both healing and guilt are intriguingly jumbled together in this ambitious third novel from Kramer (A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space, 1984; Rattlesnake Farming, 1992). In summary, the plot sounds more than a little unwieldy. Its major characters, Ned Dene (a historian and biographer) and his Danish-born wife Greta (a horse breeder), have purchased Thrush Hollow, a former Vermont resort hotelwhere their 21- year-marriage seems secure despite their temperamental differences and shared memory of a scandal involving Greta (who was, quite literally, stigmatized) and an offended bishop at the Catholic school where they had met as teenagers. Greta, furthermore, has never confessed to Ned that their son Henry was fathered by their late friend (and the love of her life), Lars Crain. Now, Ned's discovery of letters written a century earlier, by Thrush Hollow's then mistress Lucinda Dearborn, reveals a history of both illicit love and ``Passion unrealized that's akin to, and far grander than, the Denes' own spurious compatibility. And the sudden reappearance of people crucially involved in her several betrayals forces Greta to face the truth about her own confusion of loves, and understand that there are burdens she must shoulder alone. This is a very curious novel. Its use of water imagery (the art of dowsing, an inexplicable ``cure'' Lucinda Dearborn practices) is skillful and deeply suggestive. And the unfolding story of Lucinda and the famous novelist who tried, and failed, to return her lovewhich is obviously based on the relationship between Henry James and the novelist Constance Fenimore Woolsonintermittently possesses the haunting immediacy of folk ballad. Too many things are going here, and they don't all hang together, but Kramers best passages persuasively display her gift for meditative lyricism and energetic imagination.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
