In My House (Audible Audio Edition) Alex Hourston Julia Franklin Oakhill Publishing Books
Download As PDF : In My House (Audible Audio Edition) Alex Hourston Julia Franklin Oakhill Publishing Books
Maggie lives a life of careful routines and measured pleasures. But everything changes when, walking through Gatwick a few days shy of her 58th birthday, a young woman approaches her and whispers a single word "help". Maggie responds and in that moment saves a stranger, earning Anja her freedom and ensuring the arrest of a brutal trafficker.
But when the story gets picked up by the papers, Margaret is panicked by the publicity as well as the strange phone calls she begins to receive. Meanwhile Anja makes contact. She wants to thank her rescuer but quickly insinuates herself into Maggie's life. As her relationship with Anja intensifies, Maggie begins to reveal, in increments, what it is she has been hiding.
In My House (Audible Audio Edition) Alex Hourston Julia Franklin Oakhill Publishing Books
This new author no doubt shows great promise -- but it was not yet fulfilled in this book. I am astonished that some reviewers thought it "excellent" and "literary". Her style and the telling of the tale is fragmented, often obscure and cryptic. The way she writes dialogue is immensely irritating -- breaking up speech with periods in between words. When she shifts between timelines I had to reread paragraphs because I got lost. Surely there could have been spaces between paragraphs to show a jump in time? (But that might have been the Kindle formatting).Her experimental language use ("rushing eyes", for heaven's sake!) and obtuse storytelling made me want to put the book down because often I could not care less what might happen next. It's the other reviews which made me persist to the end, sure that great revelations are coming. Not so.
The story of Anja is fragmented and never fully told. First Anja seems the victim of trafficking, but later in the book she says the guy she was afraid of (Goran) was her boyfriend! She's supposed to be Albanian, but again later there is mention of Italy, out of the blue. So what exactly was Anja's real story? I found that secretive, stealing Anja left me cold.
As for characterization, that leaves a lot to be desired. It's hard to understand Margaret Benson, who takes pity on Anja. Her life story remains vague and fragmented until the last 25% of the book, when we are at last enlightened. What is Anja sometimes afraid of, and then again, not afraid of at all? What a tangled web we have here, with the author's failed attempt at "literary writing." Anja changes her colours like a chameleon. I found myself unable to work up sympathy for either of these characters.
The storyline tries to promise exposures (which do come, but they're fairly mundane), but at the same time there is no thrill in the tale: merely a rehashing of disfunctional relationships and infidelity, and at the end, a lame (happy) conclusion.
The best I can say for this book is that the author's writing began to flow after I'd read about 73% of the book. So the last quarter reads easier than the first three-quarters. I would suggest that Alex Hoursten drop the quasi-intellectual attempts and literary fuzziness, her reluctance to let her characters speak freely, her strange way of writing dialogue, and simply tell us another, better story. There are also far too many paragraphs with superfluous details about inconsequential stuff. I think Ms Hoursten has talent, but here it was mainly wasted.
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In My House (Audible Audio Edition) Alex Hourston Julia Franklin Oakhill Publishing Books Reviews
I really enjoyed the development of the characters and the relationships. It's great to read a novel where the main character is an older woman who has come to terms with the many mistakes she has made in life, but is still willing to take risks as she enters into the mystery of a new relationship. I thought the novel would bring about great reconciliation at the end, but there was some unfinished business. It was more real to end like this rather than a "happy ever after" conclusion.
IN MY HOUSE is a superb novel masquerading as a mere psychological thriller. The writing is absolutely first-rate, the characters absorbing, the action true. Alex Hourston is the real thing, and while this novel is wonderful, it has been mis-cast (probably by an editor) as a genre thriller rather than allowed to blossom as a "straight" literary work. It is compulsively readable and the story is satisfying enough, but I feel certain that Hourston's next work, if she is allowed (or allows herself) to deviate from the genre path, will be astonishing.
If for no other reason, this book is well worth reading just for the quality of its writing. Hourston employs an odd mix of formal and very casual. The style is clean and spare, with short paragraphs and plenty of dialogue, but it is very tightly packed. You can't really skim (and luckily, you won't want to). Look at how she describes the presence of a piano (which the young wife fears the neighbors will see as pretentious) in the lounge of a small flat
"And from that day, anyone who missed its arrival could view the instrument from the pavement. I wasn't much liked by that point and the piano, I think, was the final straw. People took it personally, I had to buy nets in the end."
And a few sentences later "He told me I had a pianist's hands, which was true, though I knew the compliment as fingers fit for diamonds."
This use of very familiar speech ("nets" for net curtains and the old saying about fingers fit for diamonds) establishes the immediacy of the narration in a way that the most beautiful language could not. But Hourston is also good with description; here is her protagonist describing her beloved dog, who has just fallen asleep while she is scratching him
"I admired his opportunism and the detail of his design. The seams of his eyelids and the way they met perfectly, sealing him shut. The backward slant of tufty eyelash; a dense ridge of tiny hairs. And the odd crazy whisker that sprouted from his head, feeling its way out into the world."
The writing is lovely, and the characters are well drawn, sometimes with only a few lines. Their emotions ring true, and without a trace of sentimentality. During an awkward dinner party, for instance, to avoid having to deal with her drunken daughter's rude remarks, a nervous hostess rises from the table, saying
"'Tell you what. Shall I? I'll just heat this through a bit. In case anyone wants more later. Or another spoonful before I go? There's loads!'
Everyone said no and she left us to it, hiding in the kitchen. I lost a bit of respect for her then."
Hourston has a good ear for the rhythms of speech, so dialogue is punctuated as it really sounds, as in the following apology made by one of the characters for a tactless remark "I know. Look, I'm not saying. Anything really. I was just pointing it out. We'll help. I wouldn't. God."
As for the story, I would have been content for it to go in any of many directions, but after a lovely slow start that promises more, it proceeds along expected tracks in the psychological suspense genre. In this respect it reminds me of another fantastic book that probably shouldn't have been marketed (or edited) as a thriller last year's HER, by Harriet Lane. In both novels, the narrative voices are strong enough, the characters interesting enough, the writing more than good enough to hold up without the carapace of "suspense." But to Hourston's credit, the mold is broken to some extent in IN MY HOUSE we do not have the obligatory "danger" scene at the end, or the quick wrapping up, or the demonization of any of the characters. With 5 pages to go, we are still learning things about these people and their lives with no sense of hurry, which is admirable.
I love this book, and I hope it reaches a wide readership so that Alex Hourston will have bargaining power for the next one. Hers is an exciting new voice, and it should be allowed to travel far beyond the boundaries of genre fiction.
This new author no doubt shows great promise -- but it was not yet fulfilled in this book. I am astonished that some reviewers thought it "excellent" and "literary". Her style and the telling of the tale is fragmented, often obscure and cryptic. The way she writes dialogue is immensely irritating -- breaking up speech with periods in between words. When she shifts between timelines I had to reread paragraphs because I got lost. Surely there could have been spaces between paragraphs to show a jump in time? (But that might have been the formatting).
Her experimental language use ("rushing eyes", for heaven's sake!) and obtuse storytelling made me want to put the book down because often I could not care less what might happen next. It's the other reviews which made me persist to the end, sure that great revelations are coming. Not so.
The story of Anja is fragmented and never fully told. First Anja seems the victim of trafficking, but later in the book she says the guy she was afraid of (Goran) was her boyfriend! She's supposed to be Albanian, but again later there is mention of Italy, out of the blue. So what exactly was Anja's real story? I found that secretive, stealing Anja left me cold.
As for characterization, that leaves a lot to be desired. It's hard to understand Margaret Benson, who takes pity on Anja. Her life story remains vague and fragmented until the last 25% of the book, when we are at last enlightened. What is Anja sometimes afraid of, and then again, not afraid of at all? What a tangled web we have here, with the author's failed attempt at "literary writing." Anja changes her colours like a chameleon. I found myself unable to work up sympathy for either of these characters.
The storyline tries to promise exposures (which do come, but they're fairly mundane), but at the same time there is no thrill in the tale merely a rehashing of disfunctional relationships and infidelity, and at the end, a lame (happy) conclusion.
The best I can say for this book is that the author's writing began to flow after I'd read about 73% of the book. So the last quarter reads easier than the first three-quarters. I would suggest that Alex Hoursten drop the quasi-intellectual attempts and literary fuzziness, her reluctance to let her characters speak freely, her strange way of writing dialogue, and simply tell us another, better story. There are also far too many paragraphs with superfluous details about inconsequential stuff. I think Ms Hoursten has talent, but here it was mainly wasted.
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