A Sudden Light
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the million-copy bestselling The Art of Racing in the Raincomes the breathtaking and long-awaited new novel.
This novel centres on four generations of a once terribly wealthy and influential timber family who have fallen from grace; a mysterious yet majestic mansion, crumbling slowy into the bluff overlooking Puget Sound in Seattle; a love affair so powerful it reaches across the planes of existence; and a young man who simply wants his parents to once again experience the moment they fell in love, hoping that if can feel that emotion again, maybe they won't get divorced after all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a complete change of pace from his dog-centric The Art of Racing in the Rain, Stein transports the reader to Riddell House, a 100-year-old mansion made entirely of wood overlooking Puget Sound. Jones Riddell and his 14-year-old son, Trevor, move there following the failure of Jones's business and his ensuing separation from Trevor's mother. Jones has come to Riddell House to help his younger sister, Serena, persuade their Alzheimer's-afflicted father to sell the family land, which is worth a fortune, to housing developers. But supernatural forces stand in the way of the deal. Clever Trevor, as he is called, begins to see ghosts and have visions. Researching the history of the Riddell clan rapacious timber barons he finds that it is rife with sexual secrets, incest, illness, and even madness, which forces him to realize that his dream of seeing his family whole again might come at too great a cost. With its single setting and small cast of characters (ghosts not included), the story's feeling of claustrophobia adds to the tension. Stein dramatizes the various tensions between his characters well, although narrator Trevor comes off as a tad precocious for 14. The history of the Riddell family fails to shock after a while, even as events in the present lead to the tragic denouement.
