Ashton Hall
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3.9 • 24 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
An American woman and her son unearth the buried secrets and past lives of an English manor house in this masterful and riveting novel from New York Times bestselling author Lauren Belfer.
“Infused with the brooding, gothic atmosphere of Jane Eyre or Rebecca . . . a novel that must be savored, one page at a time.”—Melanie Benjamin, author of The Children’s Blizzard
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times
“How many lives can you imagine yourself living?”
So Hannah Larson wonders. When a close relative falls ill, Hannah and her young son, Nicky, decide to join him for the summer at Ashton Hall, a historic manor house outside Cambridge, England. Hannah gave up her academic career to raise her beloved child, who is neurodivergent and experiences the world differently from others, and she’s grateful to escape her life in New York City, where her marriage has been upended by a devastating betrayal.
Soon after their arrival, ever-curious Nicky discovers the skeletal remains of a woman in a forgotten, walled-off wing of the manor, and Hannah is pulled into an all-consuming quest for answers. Working from clues in centuries-old ledgers and the personal papers of the long-departed family, Hannah begins to re-create the Ashton Hall of the Elizabethan era in all its color and conflict. As the secrets of her own life begin to unravel, and the rewards and complications of being Nicky’s mother come into focus, Hannah realizes that Ashton Hall’s women before her had lives not so different from her own. She confronts what women throughout history have had to do to control their own destinies and protect their children.
Rich with passion, strength, and ferocity across the ages, Ashton Hall is a novel that reveals how the most profound hauntings are within ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the well-crafted latest from Belfer (And After the Fire), Manhattan art historian Hannah Larson puts her career on hold to give her son, Nicky, who suffers from violent outbursts, the constant care he needs. When Hannah's uncle invites her and Nicky to spend the summer in England, she's just discovered that her husband, Kevin, is having an affair, and welcomes the respite from marital tensions. Hannah and nine-year-old Nicky are fascinated by Ashton Hall, the ancient Cambridgeshire manor in which her uncle leases an apartment. Exploring an abandoned wing, Nicky discovers a skeleton in a room that's walled up except for a single small opening. The body is identified as that of Isabella Cresham, a late–16th-century member of the family that once owned the Hall, and some of the artifacts found nearby suggest that Isabella was a Catholic despite her era's brutal religious strictures. Hannah, herself feeling trapped due to financial dependence on Kevin, who refuses to end his affair, is drawn to Isabella's story. As she gleans details of Isabella's life from sketchbooks and ledgers found in another room in the house, she struggles to chart her own future. Without slipping into country house clichés or simplistic parallels, Belfer offers a nuanced exploration of the ways women's lives are constricted. Anglophiles and Tudor history buffs will enjoy this immersive tale.
Customer Reviews
Unrealistic and Fantastical
Protagonist improbably lands at an old estate in the UK, the sick relative she’s planning to tend suddenly has to leave the country and she stays for some reason. Her son finds a skeleton in a part of the house about which somehow no one knew and a mystery unfolds! She, a stay-at-home mom with no historical, archival or archaeological training, is allowed to work with the 500-year-old artifacts found with the skeleton for some reason and helps solve the mystery! At the same time, she accepts the fact that her husband has been sleeping with a man since before she knew him and throughout their marriage without her knowledge and decides to stay with him bc she’s afraid to single-parent their very challenging young son by herself. Sad.