Bloomsbury, June 6, 2017.
Four Stars
Eleven-year-old Marcus has just lost his mother (and
only family member) to a freak car accident. He is taken from everything he
knows and is sent to live with his great aunt Charlotte on a small island in
South Carolina. Charlotte, whom Marcus had never met, is a reclusive painter
with an unusual past. Estranged from her family at a young age, Charlotte has
carved out a quiet, private life for herself – and the arrival of Marcus
changes everything.
Marcus was very close to his mother before she died,
but life wasn’t perfect then either. The two lived in poverty, and Marcus was involved
in an incident at school in which his best friend was badly injured. Although
he is devastated over the loss of his mother, Marcus is ready to start over on the
island. When Charlotte introduces him to the partially-collapsed cottage at the
end of the beach that inspired her to become a painter, Marcus becomes obsessed
with the ruins known locally as Grief Cottage. It was destroyed by a mysterious
fire during a hurricane fifty years before – a boy and his parents had been
renting the cottage at the time, and they disappeared in the storm. Their
bodies were never found.
Marcus begins visiting the cottage daily, and he
forges an unusual connection with the spirit of the missing boy. As his curiosity
builds, so does his courage – Marcus opens himself to the spirit world, and he
finds himself wanting to please the ghost so that he will show himself. There
is an element of darkness that hovers over Marcus and the cottage, an
inevitable sense that we will soon find out whether the spirit is benevolent or
not.
Meanwhile, Aunt Charlotte is succumbing to her own
demons – after a bad fall, she is unable to paint and begins to go stir crazy
in her unused studio. In the past, Charlotte has used painting to suppress her
feelings about her abusive past, and now it has all come to the surface. She
starts drinking more than usual, hiding herself in her studio and leaving Marcus
to fend for himself. The relationship between aunt and nephew is really
beautiful – despite their vast age difference, they both crave the care and
affection of the other, but find it difficult to let go of their independence. Their
cohabitation is comfortable and relaxed, despite the shadows hovering over
them.
Grief Cottage is not a ghost story as much as it is an exploration of grief, and
the many different ways that people cope with loss. Marcus learns at a young
age that death is inevitable, and that it is important to make connections with
each other while we have the chance. The strong relationships and incredibly
real characters are highlighted by the atmospheric setting – steamy summer days
and a misty, uncertain presence hovering over it all. Godwin has created
memorable, meaningful characters that will live beyond the novel for a long
time, and I will be looking for more of her novels in the future.
I received this book from Bloomsbury and NetGalley in
exchange for an honest review.
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