For some reason, I fail to connect with the characters of Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin. I find myself reading a little and then putting it away to read something else. I did finish but without any real connection or conviction about how it should end. That is surprising considering the story is about such a sympathetic main character - an eleven year old orphaned child who has had thing pretty tough in life.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2017/06/grief-cottage.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

I give Grief Cottage 3 stars. As always, Gail Godwin writes beautifully, and in such a manner that you feel you are there with the characters.

Marcus, an eleven year old boy, is the main character. He was raised as the only child of a single mother. Life wasn't easy, but they scraped by. When his mother dies in a car accident, Marcus is sent to live with his only living relative, a great-aunt named Charlotte, a reclusive artist on a small island in South Carolina. Marcus fills his days roaming the island and takes special interest in Grief Cottage, which is the subject of many of Charlotte's paintings. The cottage is in great disrepair, and has been for 50 years, since a couple and their son who were renting the cottage for vacation disappeared during a hurricane. None of them were ever found. During one of his visits to the cottage, Marcus believes he sees the ghost of the boy who disappeared and starts visiting the cottage every day. As everyone else he is in contact with on the island is elderly, the ghost soon becomes the "friend" he doesn't have.

The book is slow-paced, and I found the main character, Marcus, an eleven year old boy, very likeable, but not very realistic. He is WAY too mature for his years, which distracted me. Not my favorite work by Ms. Godwin.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA publishers for allowing me to read an e-ARC of this book.

Gail Godwin is one of my favorite authors. I think Father Melancholy's Daughter was her first book that I read, and I was hooked from there. I'd probably enjoy reading a grocery list she wrote -- she's just that good. She develops characters really well, creates a mood wonderfully, and is a great storyteller. A quick look at her site shows me she will turn 80 in June. And, she has a new book out. You have to be impressed by a work ethic like that!

Her latest, Grief Cottage, features more of the great characters I've come to expect from Godwin. The main character is Marcus, an amazingly-precocious 11-year-old.

"Not everybody gets to grow up. First you have to survive your childhood, and then begins the hard work of growing into it."

Marcus has never known who his dad is. It's just him and his mom, who has told him she'll reveal dad's identity at some time when Marcus is old enough to make sense of things. But, Mom is killed in a car accident and Marcus ends up briefly in a foster family before finally landing with his quirky artist great-aunt Charlotte.

"For a large part of my life I have lived alone ... and it has suited me very well," Charlotte tells Marcus. He takes this to heart and immediately feels obligated to earn his keep, lest he be sent away. And indeed, as Marcus cooks, cleans, and helps out elderly neighbors along the beach where he and Aunt Charlotte live, I found myself wishing more than once that I had my own Marcus around. What a great kid!

The book's title comes from a dilapidated cottage along the beach, where a mom, dad, and their young son had been killed during a hurricane decades ago. Marcus becomes intrigued by this family, particularly the boy, and visits "grief cottage" almost every day on bike rides. He hopes (and sometimes succeeds) in finding the boy's ghost/presence.

Quotes or bits from the book that I liked:

*"Funny how the same person can be an entirely different entity to various people."
*"How is it that some people can make us feel worthless even when we know we're seeing ourselves through their eyes? Certain humans are poison."
*"Marcus feels the pain of others," said Aunt Charlotte, "even when they're dead and gone."
*"You can't do anything about it because you're a child and you have no way to compare your life to other people's lives. Your foremost need is to stay safe within the only life you know."
*"After all the human noise and conflicts have stopped, the absent person has more room in your heart to spread out and be herself. My mother's been gone ten years and I know her much better now than when we saw each other every day."
*"We know so very little about the people we are closest to. We know so little about ourselves."
*"People have so many ways of shooting themselves in the foot to avoid facing something."
And finally, on a lighter note: "You could dislike someone and still admire their hairstyle." :)

So that's a taste of Gail Godwin and her writing. She makes such keen observations! Now, after all this praise, I don't think this is one of her best books. The ending was a bit confusing to me and she threw in a few PC elements that further soured me on it. However, it's probably worth reading just for a taste of the author's writing. Better yet, read something else she's written.

First off, I want to thank Bloomsbury and Netgalley for this beautiful ARC. I will share this review on the date the book is released. I will begin with my dislikes, and then move on to my likes with my final thoughts.

This book is about a young boy, Marcus, age 11, who tragically lost his mother to a bad car wreck on black ice. He is sent to live with his eclectic aunt in South Carolina, who is a landscape artist. From there, I am taken on a delightful journey about the history of "Grief Cottage."

What didn't I like about this book?
1. The overuse of parenthesis.

What did I like about this book?
1. The author tied off all plots and didn't leave any gaps.
2. The book for the most part, well-written.
3. I loved the humanity and empathy of Marcus, who is the main character. It is quite different from other eleven-year-old boys.
4. This novel is an intelligent read.
5. The characters were likable; actually lovable.
6. I loved how the author painted her scenes with colorful and rich words, like a painter.
7. I love the historical part, even if it was fictionalized.


What are my personal thoughts?
I enjoyed this story about introspection. You felt empathy for all the characters. There weren't any "bad" or non-redeemable characters like you see in other fictional works. This novel was a breath of fresh air and different from other general fiction or literary fiction. Yes, I would highly recommend this novel to other readers.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31450969-grief-cottage" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Grief Cottage" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1495821355m/31450969.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31450969-grief-cottage">Grief Cottage</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18525.Gail_Godwin">Gail Godwin</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1891005031">3 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
3.5<br />I really loved Marcus, an 11 yr old very bright boy. He is being raised by his mother and they are not well off, one night she goes out to get them pizza and dies from a car wreck. He then goes to live with his great aunt Charlotte who becomes his guardian, at a beach cottage in South Carolina.<br /><br />There is a neighboring cottage that was rented by a family 50 yrs earlier during a hurricane and none of that family has ever been found. Hence the name, Grief Cottage. Marcus has seen the ghost of the son of that family during a visit to that rundown cottage and it consumes him for awhile.<br /><br />There are many really good characters in this story and some really touching moments, but the book just moved very slow for me. <br /><br />Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing, Netgalley, and author Gail Godwin for the advanced digital book!
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12851291-karen">View all my reviews</a>

I was drawn to this book by the cover which really sets the stage for the story – to quote the book "it emanates a powerful mood" and I was captured by it immediately. This is not a fast paced book but rather a thoughtful, quiet atmospheric ghost story told through the eyes of young boy dealing with the grief of losing his mother. The writing is beautiful and I felt like I was there in this small island community watching Marcus ride up and down the shore on his bike as he wrestles with his loss, his insecurities, who he is to become and with the mystery behind the ghost of Grief Cottage. I really enjoyed it. 4*

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

BookFilter review: Gail Godwin follows up her precisely poised novel "Flora" with this literary ghost story about an orphaned eleven year old boy named Marcus. Sent off to live with an aunt he's never met, Marcus is naturally wary and eager to please. But Aunt Charlotte is a prickly, hard to read sort who says exactly what she thinks but somehow leaves Marcus wondering about the subtext of what she means. Is he in the way? Will she grow bored with him and send Marcus away? Plus, exactly how much wine can this eccentric woman drink in a single day? And then there's Grief Cottage, falling-down eyesore on the beach that Aunt Charlotte paints over and over again (selling the results to support herself) while Marcus is drawn closer to it every day until once, he swears, he sees the ghostly apparition of the little boy who disappeared from that home some 50 years ago. Sadly, some vivid characters and Godwin's elegant writing can't disguise a story that feels far too thought out to come alive. Marcus is an almost absurdly mature eleven year old boy in his inner thoughts. One can accept a precocious child (indeed, his friend Wheezer is just such a character) but Marcus's inner dialogue strains credulity. This problem worsens as the novel goes on and we spend more and more time close to his subconscious. And it all falls apart in the dramatic, atypical finale. Even this is marred further by an epilogue that spells things out far too neatly. A disappointing effort. -- Michael Giltz

Although I was interested enough to read this book in an evening, the story's attempt to fit into several genres left me unimpressed. I most enjoyed the dynamics between Marcus, Aunt Charlotte, and Lash. The story of a young boy moving to the sea with a great-aunt he'd never met following his mother's death would be a compelling story in and of itself. But this story wanted to be a thriller/mystery too so there's the Grief Cottage/ghost element. That was the least interesting part of the book to me, but it was trying to be the most interesting.

Also, I have to mention, the almost throw-away reveal at the very end just felt cheap because it wasn't developed at all, and that mystery wasn't a primary one in the story.

This book would be a good beach read for me, but others might find it too slow even for that.

The subtle lyrics of "Grief Cottage" combine the sound and sensation of the waves, sand and weathered wood. While the pace is as leisurely as a summer stroll, the passages beautifully illustrate grief, human flaws and how people imprint themselves upon us. Marcus is the only son of a plucky, struggling single mother. His paternity is a mystery. He is devastated by his mother's sudden death, yet his description of the immediate aftermath is rendered sedately. He goes to live with his artist aunt on an island rich with lore and accents as thick as the marshes of South Carolina. His fascination with a mysterious figure only he can see and hear and trying to manage his kindly but troubled aunt's demons eventually lead him to face his own grief. A hint of the supernatural, an unflinching look at aging, dying, secrets and humanity and one of the most beautifully written descriptions of grief make this a memorable work.

Marcus was 11 when his mother died in a car accident, and he went to live with his great aunt Charlotte, his only relative, in her beach side house. Both loners, the two of them are damaged by their pasts and trying their bests to live in the same space. Marcus becomes fascinated by a deserted cottage at the end of the beach, and the story of a family that disappeared in a long ago hurricane. A very precocious and most introspective pre-teen, Marcus is convinced that a ghost of the boy is living in the cottage and that they are communicating with each other. His summer becomes even more solitary when Aunt Charlotte falls, necessitating hospitalization and rehab, and as she becomes more depressed she isolates herself even more. While both Marcus and Charlotte are sympathetic characters, and the first person voice of Marcus adds immediacy to the narrative, readers may have a hard time imagining that any eleven-year-old could possibly be so self-aware and discerning. Still, we feel his pains and sadness acutely.

“We know so very little about the people we are closest to. We know so little about ourselves.”

Gail Godwin has been lauded and honored many times over, and has five New York Times Bestsellers to her credit. I read Grief Cottage free and early, thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury USA. Now I have to find her earlier work and read it, because her extraordinary prose is worth seeking out. Those that love achingly brilliant literary fiction will want to read this book, which will be available to the public June 6, 2017.

Marcus and his mother live alone and are very close; when she dies, it is as if the bottom has fallen out of his world. He is taken in by a relative he has never met; his Great-Aunt Charlotte lives on a tiny island off the coast of South Carolina. Haunted by his grief, Marcus is drawn to a cottage said to be haunted by a boy that died in a hurricane many years before.

The story begins with a lengthy internal monologue that made me fear I’d regret requesting the review copy. There’s a saying that only those that know the rules of written convention well are entitled to break them upon occasion, and Godwin is one that does, and she does it for a reason. I can promise the reader that if you push through the first twenty percent of the story, complete with very frequently used parenthesis, you’ll be in it for keeps.

Marcus is one of the most resonant characters I’ve read in a long time. He is orphaned, unmoored, and friendless; his one good friend insulted Marcus’s mother, and the friendship was broken. Now his great fear is that Great-Aunt Charlotte, a reclusive painter that values her privacy and has a very small home, may grow weary of the inconvenience of having him with her and send him away. The reader can clearly see this brusque but thoughtful woman grow attached to her young relative, but Marcus is too overwhelmed and depressed to catch a clue. He tries to make himself scarce to reduce his impact on her, and in doing so spends an inordinate amount of time nurturing and watching the nests of leatherback turtle eggs laid on Charlotte’s beach, and walking or biking back and forth to the far end of the island, where the legendary Grief Cottage, Charlotte’s most lucrative painting subject, sits desolate and friendless, not unlike Marcus himself.

A measure of a well written a novel is the way our affection for it lingers after we have finished reading it and look back after we've read other things. Because I received a very early galley for this one, I have read and reviewed 24 other books since this one, and yet when I see the cover for this title, I heave a deeply satisfied sigh. Oh yes. Grief Cottage. That one was wonderful!

Those that only enjoy action-packed thrillers will have no joy here; rather, Godwin’s prose is the sort one sinks into, like a deep feather bed or a favorite chair by the fire. For those that love strong literature, I cannot think of a better way to spend quiet spring evenings.

Highly recommended.

Engaging and beautifully written.

Interesting characters, intriqujng storyline. Slow moving story - writing kept me hooked - a mix of quirky characters and a ghost story. Really enjoyed this unique novel.

A real page turner couldn't put it down characters are well developed

The stream of consciousness writing was very tedious and a chore to finish this book. The overall premise of the story had potential, but just didn't quite hit the mark. The writing was too sophisticated for the narration from a child's perspective.

Loved, loved this recent novel by one of my all-time favorite authors, Gail Godwin. Pretty classic writing and I gulped it down.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, I had the privilege of reading Grief Cottage, by Gail Godwin. I loved everything about this book and grew to care about what happened to each character. Marcus, age 11, loses his mother and goes to live with his artistic Aunt Charlotte, who has lived a reclusive beach life for close to 30 years. As each gets to know and respect each other, they learn how to cope with their pasts, resolve struggles in their lives, and deal with the ghost in Grief Cottage. This beautifully written book will appeal to every age reader and leave a lasting impression. I loved this book.

this book starts, inappropriately, low key, and stays low key for a significant amount of time. it's inappropriate. it's perfect.

an eleven-year-old loses his mom, and only parent, in a freak car accident, wholly unexpectedly. this lands him in foster care for a year, after which a proper guardian is found in a great aunt who lives on an island off the coast of north carolina. this is all taken care of by godwin in a few pages, no big deal. the kid settles easily in his new life. he knows how to stay out of the way, he is preternaturally good at making himself useful with housecleaning, he leaves his crotchety, used-to-living-on-her-own aunt be, he takes care of himself. in fact, he and his aunt quickly settle into a comfortable routine. the boy gets up early in the morning before the tourists descend on the beach the aunt's cottage abuts, makes his bed, makes himself breakfast, then get out and walks or bikes to a ruined, abandoned cottage some ways north on the island (the eponymous grief cottage, thus named because of reasons that play a key role in the novel), where he spends a few hours sitting on the porch. he comes back, has lunch, does chores (he seems determined to do laundry every day), then sits with the protected turtle eggs that happen to be buried in the sand just in front of his aunt's cottage (he calls this his mediation time). finally, he has dinner with his aunt, then goes to bed and reads.

wash, rinse, repeat.

the quiet rhythm of marcus's days is matched by the quiet rhythm of life on the island, where all the locals know and look after each other and seem to have developed the ability not to see the invading, distasteful tourists. it is also matched, on a much larger, much grander scale, by the multi-million-year process of egg-laying, hatching, running into the ocean without being eaten by birds and other predators, and surviving extinction in which the loggerhead turtles who live on the island engage. we hear a lot about these turtles, which is nice. the most important thing that we learn is that they have been around and doing their thing for forty million years, compared to the mere two hundred thousand years of the humans who have driven them to extinction.

the rhythm of life and death is one of the central themes of the novel. another one is what is visible and what is invisible. the tourists who come and conduct their rowdy life on this multi-million-year old beach are just as invisible to the locals as the grief of multiple losses is invisible to marcus, who delves into routine and appears to be the best adjusted kid on the planet -- including all those kids who have not lost their sole parent to sudden tragedy.

but death comes up just about all the time. marcus's memories of his life with his mother are rife with death. one of their most typical walks, in the mountains of north carolina, was in cemeteries. one of their typical conversations was the kind of funeral they wanted. they lived in poverty and under great duress, and his mother was always exhausted from overwork. they loved each other very much -- had in fact a relationship that sounds absolutely wonderful -- yet marcus hardly ever talks about missing her.

i'll put the rest under a spoiler warning because you might not want to read it if you haven't read the novel yet, though i will not give major spoilers, just interpretive spoilers that foreshadow big spoilers.

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***

in fact, death and violence are present in marcus's highly regimented life just below the surface. his fascination with the dead boy and the dead family that were swept away by hurricane hazel in the fifties is of course the prime example. the dead boy's ghost, a masterful literary creation in its aptness and the role it plays in this novel about surviving grief, is marcus's best friend because he's dead, and knows death, and died in a terrible, terrible way. the turtles that are so tremendously fascinating to marcus are also pretty much doomed. some will survive the hatching, but most will simply die. not only that, but they have been driven to a meager number by reckless and stupid humans.

marcus most pointedly does not hang out nor does he seek other kids. in fact, he dreads them. he loves the lonely island life, his developing and browning body, the company of his disturbed but loving aunt, the companionship of the adults who surround her. in fact, there is really only one adult in aunt charlotte's life, lachicotte hayes. everyone is loving, but everyone is also damaged -- just like marcus. both charlotte and lachicotte cannot sustain intimacy and closeness. they are loners who relate to life through objects and can connect to marcus because, just like the turtles, the paintings (charlotte's objects), and the cars (lachicotte's objects), he is different from them (he's a child) and therefore undemanding of things they are unable to give. death and injury are all over the novel, and marcus skates around them while anchoring himself in fantasies of survival, the most noticeable representative of which is the ghost boy (ghosts are survivors by definition).

but grief does catch up with him, because it has to, because no one can live unless they face death, and through marcus's reconnoitering with grief some healing comes to everyone.

***END OF SPOILERS***

this is my first novel by gail godwin, i am ashamed to say. i think that, at the end of the year, it will show up in many best-of-2017 lists, and probably will be at least on the long list of the Tournament of Books. writers who have been writing this long and are this talented acquire a crazy good ability to strip the human heart to its simplest, most basic story-telling power. their novels are unflashy but tremendously deep, and this depth penetrates the mind of the reader and brings beauty and love and nourishment. i have not enough words to say about how much i admire this.

I loved this novel but I was not able to finish it before it was archived. Thank you for the opportunity.

I really enjoyed this book. It is a coming of age story of a young boy spending a summer with his great aunt in South Carolina. The location is described beautifully and you feel as if you are sitting on the beach with Marcus looking at the cottage or watching for the turtles to "boil up'". I really cared for the characters and all of their idiosyncrasies. It is a well told story dealing with the past and the grief the characters are dealing with in their own way. I would recommend this book.