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Grief Cottage

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Enjoyable read. Well done characters and interesting framing elements that brought the southern atmosphere to life.

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I felt a connection with the title & cover combination because of things that happened in my life in the year prior to reading this book.
The book was touching and a bit heartbreaking. It's such a well written story.

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A powerful tale of loss and magical in its own right. Marcus, 11 years old, mother now passed away and a summer with Aunt Charlotte. He finds a lone cottage that locals call "grief cottage" due to a disappearance years ago.

Give this a read!

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This book was more beautiful than I ever imagined. I thought it would be sad, and it definitely was, but it also had a lot of beauty to it. I would definitely recommend it.

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The premise of Grief Cottage really appealed to me as a reader and as someone who has experienced great loss.

Gail Godwin paints a very artistic picture of a young boy who's lost his mother and is sent to live with his great aunt. The sentiment is felt in Marcus's initial detachment and his long walks on the beach.

However, I really struggled to finish this one. I wasn't able to connect with the characters as much as I wanted to, and the drawn-out plotline was not able to keep my attention.

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Grief Cottage

by Gail Godwin

I read one or two of Godwin's books long before I began tracking my reading with any kind of purpose, but when I saw her new book on NetGalley, I was eager to read it. Pitched as a mystery/ghost story and a moving exploration of grief, it delivered on all counts for me. I almost wanted to call it Grief Town, because everyone in this book is grieving, far beyond Marcus' loss and whatever happened in the ruined cottage down the beach. Godwin's story comes alive with her deft prose, her quirky and compelling characters, and her evocative setting. It's not so much a mystery — since the missing pieces are not all that hard to put together — but it's a story of loss, love, and how to carry on when things don't work out the way you planned. Perfect beach read, if you are still able to do that, but trade that in a pinch for a comfy chair by the fire with a nice cup of tea or hot chocolate.


For Goodreads:

Why I picked it — I read Evensong and like Godwin's writing.

Reminded me of… A little bit of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and Sheri Reynolds' A Gracious Plenty.

For my full review — click here

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Not what I expected and was disappointed. Took too long to get going. Very little suspense for my taste.

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The story has strong characters and the protagonist, Marcus, is an old soul or how old was he really telling this story? I was never quite sure and at times I felt like there was too much telling rather than showing. He doesn’t have childhood friends really and he relates to adults more than children his own age. His Aunt Charlotte-who takes him in after his mother dies- is quite an odd bird and values her privacy in extreme ways.
While the premise is an interesting one, I found it hard to get into and it took me sometime to finish the book. When I finally got to the ending it just seemed to end abruptly and I was dissatisfied, as I was hoping there would be a strong climax to the story. How is this a thriller ghost story? I didn’t come away with that feeling at all. The conflicts seemed muted to me.
On a positive note, much of the story is atmospheric and the setting is quite good.
I am sad to report I gave this book two stars.
I obtained a review copy from the publishers through NetGalley for my honest opinion.
Stephanie M. Hopkins

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This is a novel that drew me in completely. Set almost entirely during one fateful summer when the damaged pre-teen boy Marcus goes to live with his eccentric Great Aunt in her beach house following the death of his beloved mother, Grief Cottage really captures the feeling of being just on the outskirts of reality in a way that will be familiar to anyone dealing with loss and great change at a particularly vulnerable time in one's life. It's also a spooky ghost story if you want it to be, and pleasingly heavy on the windswept beachy atmosphere.

Marcus' feelings and obsessions resonated with me, as did his relationships with his Great Aunt and some of the other people around her, including a kindly elder gentlemen who becomes a sort of father figure to Marcus. There are also intriguing mysteries surrounding Marcus' mother's past, and of course the "Grief Cottage" so central to the plot. The cottage is another beach house, abandoned for years, at which Marcus is convinced he is communicating with the ghost of a teenage boy who disappeared there long ago. Is he really? Or is he just becoming unhinged? Or is is a bit of both? I know how I'm reading it, but others may disagree.

There's an unfortunate flaw that takes this book down a notch for me, and that is the last section. It is just way too much pat melodrama to have the adult Marcus called back to that mountain town where he last lived with his mother as a child, before the main events of the book, to visit the dying former best friend with whom a violent altercation was one of the defining moments that marked him. That whole bit, although just as well-written as the rest, is even more unrealistic than the ghost story!

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Publishers Weekly chose Grief Cottage as one of its best books for 2017. I'll second that, but if you check the reviews at Good Reads, they are mixed.

FIRST SENTENCE: "Once there was a boy who lost his mother."

The first sentence makes it clear to me that this remembered coming-of-age story, dealing with grief and loss, is part fairy tale and part ghost story .

THE STORY: When his mother dies suddenly, eleven year old Marcus is sent to live with a reclusive elderly relative on an island off South Carolina. Aunt Charlotte is an artist and points out a derelict house she has painted for years. 50 years earlier a family living there was lost during a hurricane. Marcus becomes fascinated with the family and their son since he cannot find their names in any of the accounts of the storm. His other fascination is with the turtles the community is guarding as they prepare for their birth and trek to the sea. These are his memories of the people and that summer.

WHAT I THOUGHT: I think my recent problem with lack of interest in reading may have more to do with the books I chose than reading itself. Godwin's writing fulfills all my requirements. I want to learn something new and I want the story to be told with great craft and skill. Godwin is a master. It's been many years since I read Finishing School, but I still recall being entranced. One reviewer on Good Reads mentioned the slowness of the story but isn't that the point? Every story has its rhythm.

When I was eleven (or so), I walked home from school rather than take the bus so I could explore a mansion that was in the processing of being torn down. I can still remember the fascination of exploring the many rooms and wondering about the lives of the people who had lived there.

In college I wrote a paper about Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Godwin even mentions this work in her note to the reader. For me, it's better not to be sure. When my father died, I ended up sleeping in his bed after attending the funeral. In that twilight before falling completely asleep, I felt a comforting hand adjust my blanket. I have always been sure that my father was saying a final good-bye.

There are so many ways that this book triggered memories for me. Even the characters suggested adults I knew growing up.

FAVORITE QUOTE: "I went back and tried to track the whole thing from the beginning, as you would trace on a map a route taken."

"Didn't something have to be one thing or the other, either real or imagined? Or could it be that the two things weren't mutually exclusive?"

"When we don't realize how remarkable someone is while they're still with us. Then after they're gone we wish we had told them, but when they were around we didn't know yet."

BOTTOM LINE: This was an amazingly satisfying read full of stories and interesting characters that are themselves mysteries. There's a languid pace to the book, which doesn't stop it from being totally compelling. By the end Godwin has carefully tied up all the threads of the stories, even those the reader might not have been expecting. Highly Recommended.

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition (June 6, 2017)
ISBN-10: 1632867044
ISBN-13: 978-1632867049

Disclaimer: An electronic copy of this book was provided to me by NetGalley/Bloomsbury USA for a fair review.


Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including Unfinished Desires, A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholy's Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, and Evenings at Five. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961--1963, the first of two volumes, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer. She lives in Woodstock, New York (from Amazon).

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I enjoyed this story. The characters are well written, and the story line is well done.

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a slow and sensitive journey with ghosts, real or imagined. Marcus, the eleven year old narrator, is charming and precocious. His great aunt, with whom he lives after his mother's death, is artistic and solitary. The sense of place reigns supreme as Godwin describes the beach, Grief Cottage or the south in general. Events became a bit rushed towards the end and some of the narrative is repeated when it isn't necessary. An abrupt ending but overall an enjoyable read.

Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley

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This book is a startling ghost story and not at all what I expected from the description or even the interviews with the author, Gail Godwin. This reads more as a psychological thriller to me, as the narrative lives entirely in the voice and mind of the young protagonist, Marcus, after the death of his mother. Marcus' experience of loss and grief, coupled with a coming-of-age period in his life creates an atmosphere where we have to ask ourselves how reliable the narrator really is, and what is the significance of reality - in other words, if an experience is "real" in our minds, who is to say whether we are experiencing it fully in the physical world around us, or not?

I think the question of how much we can take this to be a supernatural story and how much we can see this as an examination of the changes in the mind when faced with the trauma of sudden loss, is a really interesting one. My only qualm with this story is that sometimes I hear too much of the Godwin's own voice in the guise of the 11 year old boy narrating and it's a bit incongruous for my tastes. However, it can read a bit like some of the books of the 19th century where young, precocious intelligent narrators view the world in a surprisingly mature light. So there is some charm to that. Regardless, be prepared for a complete surprise with this book - these colder, gloomier months are the perfect atmosphere for cozying up with this one!

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Young Marcus was only 11 years old when his mother was killed in car accident. After a short stay in foster care he is sent to live at a beach cottage in South Carolina with a reclusive great-aunt Charlotte, a painter. Charlotte is his only living relative. Charlotte doesn't talk much but little by little we learn about her life, as well as what his mother's life was like as he unpacks boxes from their former life together.

The "Grief Cottage", a long abandoned cottage nearby, came about its name after the residents were drowned during Hurricane Hazel in 1954. A young boy was also believed to have drown, but on Marcus' daily walks to the cottage he stumbles upon the ghostly presence of a young boy, presumably, the one that was believed to have died with his parents.

Very atmospheric, beautiful imagery and quick seaside characters made this a fun summer read.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2076886453

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This is a great book and I really enjoyed reading it. The story is fast paced and there is a lot going on. The characters are very believable and the story goes from the fifties to presant, The main character is a boy who is eleven years old when the book begins, he has just lost his mother and has been sent to live with his great aunt who he doesn't know. His aunt is a artist and lives alone and it is quite an adjustment for both of them in the beginning. I gave this a four star rating instead of five only because I really didn't like the ending. I feel it was rather abrupt and inconclusive. However, I feel it is a good read and I definitely recommend it.

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Marcus Harshaw is eleven years old, but he has an old soul.

He and his mother lived together in semi-poverty sharing a bedroom. An only child, he was studious and dependable. Serious and academically advanced, Marcus excelled at school and helped his Mum who worked several part-time jobs... that is until one night she went out to get them a pizza and died in an automobile accident. Afterward, Marcus spent a short while in foster care until he went to live with his great aunt Charlotte Lee who lived on an island in South Carolina. An island three miles long and two-tenths of a mile wide.

Charlotte is a laconic, solitary person. Some might say eccentric. She is his grandmother's sister - an artist - an alcoholic. She is unerringly kind to Marcus and keeps her three bottle a day wine drinking habit under 'control'. Marcus, at eleven, is always cognizant of the fact that he was foisted upon her and that he is invading her precious solitude. She lives on the beach in an old cottage which she had renovated herself. Now, she spends her time painting pictures of the local scenery to sell to well-heeled tourists and makes a good living with her art. One subject of her paintings is an old, derelict cottage down at the other end of the beach, one the locals call "Grief Cottage". It is this cottage that inspired her to paint, and it is this cottage that Marcus is drawn to...

Though Marcus thinks she is merely tolerating him, Charlotte grows very fond of him over time.

"You're good company, Marcus. You listen and put things together."

The book is mostly taken up with Marcus's first summer living with Aunt Charlotte. An eleven year old boy reeling from the loss of his mother - suddenly living in an environment different to any he had known before. The beach became his solace. He would take his new bike up to Grief Cottage for a daily pilgrimage to visit with what he called 'the ghost boy'. He talked to the loggerhead turtle eggs which were beneath the sand near his aunt's boardwalk to the beach. He did the grocery shopping, the laundry, and all the house cleaning for the reclusive Charlotte. He made the meals and visited with the nonagenarian next-door neighbor, Coral Upchurch. He painstakingly unpacked the boxes that were all he had left of his mother and his former life. He found his mother's GED textbooks and studied them thinking that if he could pass the GED he would be out from under Charlotte's feet and she might be proud of him. The highlight of his summer was when the baby loggerheads 'boiled' up from under the sand and made their precarious trek to the ocean.

Marcus fears that his introspective thoughts coupled with his 'seeing' of the ghost boy might make him lose his grip. He realizes he has always felt unwanted.

"I needed to keep the different parts of myself in their proper places or I could go insane. Aunt Charlotte would be in her rights to send me to an institution."

If I had a problem with anything in this novel it would be that I thought Marcus's character was too mature for his tender age of eleven. His thoughts were so intelligent, empathetic and advanced... He shouldered responsibilities that most eleven year-old boys would be completely unable to cope with. How many eleven year olds do you know who would 'worry' over the state of dirty bed linen? who would clean and disinfect the bathroom after a stranger had used it for an explosive bowel movement?

The cover of this novel is perfect. Just as I imagined Aunt Charlotte would have painted it. The setting highly resonated with me as just this past March my husband and I drove down to South Carolina and visited some islands there, making the scenery accurately vivid in my mind. It reminded me of the history of the use of 'Gullah-blue' or 'Haint blue' paint used to ward off evil spirits in South Carolina. I loved that the book mentions "Brookgreen Gardens" which we visited and loved. The book even mentioned my favorite brand of tea, Typhoo.

"Grief Cottage" is a memorable novel that explores the concepts of memory, grief, and of loss. Slow paced, yet insightful and sensitive, the novel is highly recommended to anyone who likes to read atmospheric literary fiction.

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Published by Bloomsbury USA on June 6, 2017

Marcus is ten when his mother dies in an accident. He is sent to live with his great aunt Charlotte, a woman he has never met. Charlotte lives in a beach cottage on a South Carolina island and makes a living painting island landscapes. One of her most popular paintings is of Grief Cottage at the far end of the beach. Before it was partially destroyed in a fire, the cottage was occupied for the summer by a young boy and his parents. The parents died in a storm while searching for the boy, whose body was never found.

Charlotte is reclusive and not particularly interested in, or capable of, raising a ten-year-old boy. Marcus knows he is intruding on her privacy, and while Charlotte does not intend to make Marcus feel unwelcome in her home, Marcus has reason to believe that he is a burden, no matter how helpful he tries to be. Mostly, he tries to stay away so Charlotte can enjoy her solitude. Long walks on the beach to Grief Cottage are a logical way to spend his time.

Gail Godwin’s cover blurb warns the reader that Grief Cottage is a ghost story, but it is primarily the story of Marcus’ struggle to understand his life. Marcus was uprooted once, while his mother was still alive, after he inflicted a savage beating on a friend. This new change in his life, following his mother’s death, might in some ways be welcome as a new beginning.

Is Grief Cottage haunted? Marcus sees the ghost of a boy at the ruins of the cottage, but perhaps he is seeing the manifestation of his own grief. The ghost makes only rare appearances, creating a frame for the rest of Marcus’ experiences on the island.

The reader encounters quite a few digressions in Grief Cottage, from biographical snippets about Alec Guinness (who, like Marcus, did not know his father’s identity) to details of the invented island and its history. Some of the digressions help build setting and flesh out characters, but after a point, they impede the story’s development. On the other hand, information about erosion of the beach and (sometimes futile) efforts to preserve historic places establish the themes of change and resistance to change by hanging onto the past that pervade the novel.

Some aspects of Grief Cottage, particularly certain characters, are a wee bit too pretentious. For example, Marcus spends time with an aging bedridden woman who is engaged in a self-absorbed archeology of herself and has a good cry when she realizes that no self can ever share their entire being with another self. Similar wisdom imparted by other island inhabitants is difficult to endure, simply because it is unrelenting.

Aunt Charlotte often tells Marcus that he is too good to be true. I shared that sentiment. Too good, too thoughtful, too helpful, too courteous. Godwin makes clear that his goodness is motivated by fear of rejection (and by being raised by a caring mother), but his goodness also makes Marcus dull, despite the drama he has endured.

Other aspects of Grief Cottage just didn’t work for me. After spending the novel being a tortured model of goodness, Marcus is inhabited by an imaginary gremlin who coaxes him to do something mildly bad and then punishes him with a self-destructive impulse. The gremlin, unlike the ghost, struck me as a plot device rather than a mental construct that Marcus would actually devise. And since Marcus’ voice, or at least his internal voice, is that of adult with an Ivy League education, I couldn’t accept it as belonging to a middle school boy. In fact, everyone in the novel speaks in the same voice, which seems false given their varying backgrounds.

Still, there is no doubt that Gail Godwin is among the most elegant writers in current literature, and the novel bears reading simply for its graceful language. Despite my reservations about Marcus, I appreciated Godwin’s insights into the island and the people who inhabit it.

RECOMMENDED

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In this lovely, slow-moving gothic story, eleven-year-old Marcus Harshaw, whose mother has just died, moves to South Carolina to live with his great-aunt, Charlotte Lee, in a small beach cottage.

Charlotte, a reclusive painter who drinks too much wine, warmly takes in Marcus. She's made a name for herself painting almost exclusively a ruined cottage nearby. She tells Marcus that it matches the ruin of her own life. And she also tells Marcus that a family—a teenage son and his parents—went missing from the cottage fifty years ago in a hurricane. The cottage, empty since then, has been named "Grief Cottage" by the locals.

This, of course, fascinates Marcus. With a long summer ahead of him, he finds his independence in a vintage bicycle and becomes a bit obsessed with sea turtles nesting near his aunt's cottage. But it is Grief Cottage that really haunts him, and he visits day after day. No one remembers the name of the missing family that was renting the cottage, and even old newspapers at the library don't have the information. Then, one day, Marcus sees the teenager's ghost at the doorway of the cottage—is it a dream? A vision conjured by a boy who wants to see the dead? Or a real ghost?

It almost doesn't matter in this beautifully drawn portrait of loss and loneliness. Marcus, who never knew who his father was, feels he is danger of losing his only relative, Charlotte, as well, as she sinks deeper into alcoholism. Godwin writes in the introduction that she has always been "drawn to those crossover places in ghost stories and novels: the hair-thin junctions between sanity as we understand it and what we call 'the other side.'"

This is not your typical ghost story, but something more complex—and wonderful. Oh, and Marcus, quietly stubborn, does end up solving a mystery in the end.

§ Lourdes Venard is an independent editor who divides her time between New York and Maui.

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This had a good, multi-layered premise, but somehow was less than completely satisfying. There seemed to be an awful lot of repetition, as if the editing process didn't catch the redundancies. It terrible....just disappointing and mediocre.

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From the Militant Recommender Book Review Blog:
https://militantrecommender.blogspot.com/2017/07/on-beach-grief-cottage-by-gail-godwin.html
Eleven year old Marcus Harshaw suddenly finds himself orphaned after his mother never returns from fetching them a pizza for dinner. After a stint in foster care he is sent to live with his only relative, his Great Aunt Charlotte, an artist, who lives in a beach house on a South Carolina island.

Beautifully told in Marcus's words as he looks back at this new life on the beach, a place that sounds so perfect, that the Recommender is ready to relocate! Marcus explores the island and meets some of the locals including a very charming gentleman who is a close friend of his Aunt's.

Before Marcus's arrival, Aunt Charlotte had lived a solitary existence and Marcus wonders how he will fit into her home life as she often barricades herself in her studio coming out only for more wine, the occasional banana or cup of yogurt.

He worries that she may tire of him and yet, all who meet him are impressed by his intelligence and his open and inquisitive nature.

Almost at once, Marcus is sent off to walk the beach, and to eventually make the acquaintance of Grief Cottage, a derelict beach shack that was long ago the scene of a tragedy during a hurricane, and the subject of so many of his Aunt's paintings that it helped to pay her bills.

Drawn to the cottage after reading its history about an un-named family that perished during that storm, one of whom was a teenage boy, Marcus believes he senses a presence there, perhaps the ghost of the boy. Is this a menacing spirit? Or one trying to connect with him, another boy, who may be able to help him.

Whether this ghost boy is real or something Marcus imagines is only one aspect of this appealing story. If you are looking for something more thoughtful to read on vacation than the usual summer fluff, look no further than Ms. Godwin's Grief Cottage.

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