Customer Reviews

Arcadia Falls

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book bears distinct resemblance to Goodman's earlier Lake of Dead Languages. Both take place at elite private schools in the northeast. Both books' main characters are single mothers and teachers who move to these schools to teach under difficult circumstances. And both books rely heavily on student and faculty obsession with old myths. In Arcadia Falls the single mother in question is Meg Rosenthal, recently widowed folklore scholar, who moves herself and her daughter to a remote region of upstate New York to take a much-needed teaching job at the Arcadia School. The school began its life as a feminist artist colony, whose founders wrote and illustrated fairy tales. The school's founders, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhart, are professional and romantic partners, but with the arrival of a charismatic sculptor at the colony, Lily finds herself in the midst of a troublesome love triangle. The consequences of this triangle will lead to Lily's death. It quickly becomes apparent to Meg that the Arcadia School is a dangerous and deadly place,not just in Lily's time, but in her own, too. The books is the retelling of three stories, that of Meg and Sally Rosenthal, that of Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhart, and the fairy tale, The Changeling Girl. Goodman does an excellent job of weaving these tales together. While the book does bear some similarities to some of Goodman's earlier work, it is not merely the same story retold. I was captivated with discovering who or what was responsible for Lily Eberhart's death. I did find that after the circumstances of Lily's death were revealed the book was neither as compelling, nor as plausible. The ending is not the most satisfying, but this was still an enjoyable and suspenseful read.

Forced by the untimely death of her husband to accept a teaching position at an isolated East Coast boarding school called ARCADIA, Meg Rosenthal finds herself immersed in the turmoil surrounding two deaths at the school. One death, that of the schools founder Lily Eberhardt, happened years ago while the other occurs during Megs first weeks at the school.

Through the accidental discovery of a journal written by Lily, Meg uncovers not only the history of ARCADIA's inception as an artist colony for women and its later metamorphosis into a private girls' school, she also becomes privy to the unusual relationship between the schools original founders. With elements of pagan ceremonies and witchcraft not to mention the revelation of long buried secrets, author Carol Goodman immerses the reader in an atmosphere teeming with a sinister and malevolent glow.

For readers with a taste for tales of love and revenge told with a gothic flair ARCADIA FALLS will more than satisfy their reading palate. This is primarily a story of relationships.....those between friends, between mothers and daughters, between students and teachers. It is also a taut allegory imbued with fairy tales and folklore that mask actual social and personal circumstances. This story within a story moves back and forth between the present and the past, as secrets long hidden are resurrected posing imminent danger to our protagonist Meg Rosenthal and her teenaged daughter, Sally. Displaying her storytelling prowess, Ms. Goodman has given us a cast of multi-faceted and well defined, but not necessarily likable, characters and a final reveal containing a myriad of twists and turns plus enough suspense to keep her readers mesmerized. 31/2 stars

Meg Rosenthal, widowed nearly a year ago and fallen on less than prosperous times, takes a teaching job at a forest-surrounded former arts colony, now boarding school, in an upstate New York town called Arcadia Falls. She brings along with her her daughter Sally, who has become withdrawn and morose since her father's death.

Meg is fascinated by the school's founders, Vera and Lily, who collaborated on fairy tales and whose companionship was severed by Lily's untimely death when she fell into a deep clove on the night she was supposedly running off with her lover. Meg teaches folklore, and finds herself immediately surrounded by a student body in love with pagan celebrations and beliefs in the 'white woman' said to haunt the trees of the school grounds. The school is led by the reticent Ivy St. Clare, who is "always watching," as one character warns Meg. It's all very Gothic in setting and mood, with the woods lending themselves nicely to the dusty and even creepy disrepair of the place.

On the night of the school year's opening festivities, a promising young woman falls, or is pushed, to her death in the same place that Lily died some 50 years before. Meg finds herself drawn into the investigation and drawn to the rugged town sheriff too, even as she sees Sally opening up to a new group at school and drawing even farther away from her mom. Meg discovers the long-missing journal that Lily had left behind in the cottage she has been given, and quickly (but not too quickly or we would actually figure things out) starts to learn the real history of the Arcadian arts circle and Lily and Vera's bond, along with its secrets.

I realized I have read all of Goodman's books, and most are good enough reads, but I found this one rather cliche and tiresome. There are twists and turns, and the (sigh) expected romance between Meg and the sheriff. There is slight surprise in the predictable ending, and then an are-you-kidding-so-unnecessary additional twist to round the book out in the closing chapter. Ho-hum.

This is the first novel by Carol Goodman I have read but it won't be my last. I really enjoyed the way she skillfully combines the problems of a contemporary young widow and her daughter, a tragedy from early in the 20th century that continues to haunt people of the 21st and some great fairy tale traditions in her new novel ARCADIA FALLS. Sure there are some very predictable and clichéd plot elements in this literate romantic suspense tale but Goodman writes so well the recycling of often used devices can be forgiven. The setting of a small private art school for high schoolers somewhere near Kingston in upstate New York is well rendered and the author makes good use of seasonal changes and ancient traditions to tell her story and really give the reader a sense of place. Most of the characters are well developed and rendered though protagonist Meg's love interest, Callum, remains pretty much a stereotype of a perfect lover. The book may actually have too many twists to be believable but it is still a very entertaining read for readers who like their mystery and romance delivered with intelligence.

Yup, I'm done. No more Carol Goodman books for me. The stories, characters, themes, even the decor (as in having a Morris chair in every single novel -- TWO in Arcadia Falls!) are recycled from one book to the next and her beautiful prose can only sustain the same material for so long -- I was able to tolerate two books with such similarities, but after the five that I've read, I'm just not interested in giving her any more chances. She is clearly a talented writer, but it appears she only had one original creative idea for a plot, and that's a shame. Maybe she should look to other sources for ideas and use her beautiful writing style to tell someone else's story.

Carol Goodman does it again. Her books follow a pattern--I hate to use the word formula--it's too mass market. For those people who were reading her for the first time and didn't find it realistic, it isn't supposed to be. Her books are a mixture of mystery and fantasy, and a sense of the paranormal is always there, but you're never really sure. The settings are elite private schools, artists' colonies, writers' retreats, always on some isolated old estate that has dark secrets and local legends surrounding it. Water is always a major theme, with deaths in or near water. Arcadia Falls is no exception. Meg and her teenage daughter Sally leave the real world of Great Neck, Long Island, for Aracadia School in the rural part of Albany County, into a world of fairy tales,folklore, religion (including that old religion, paganism) and witchcraft. Soon after their arrival, one of the students is killed, on the spot and apparently in the same manner as the mysterious death of one of the school's founders years before. Meg delves deep into the school's history to find out what really happened in the woods that are supposedly haunted by the White Witch. Another major theme of the novel is the mother-daughter relationship, and whether a woman can be both an artist and a mother at the same time. Since one of my good friends has been successful at both, I'd say why not. Part of the book, however, looks back to the 1930s and the Great Depression, when things were very different, and there may be a different answer. Carol Goodman writes well and has a terrific imagination. It also helps to read interviews with the author. Sit back and enjoy, I recommend it.

I really enjoyed this book until the ending. It was just so convoluted and unrealistic I had to struggle my way through the last 60 pages. It was like the author got so wrapped up in telling stories and didn't know how to stop when it was time for the book to end.

Fans of Charlotte Bronte, Dorothy Sayers, and Joseph Campbell will love this book, a modern day gothic novel made bittersweet by thoughtful, sensitive human interaction and gripping by unexpected twists and turns that draw the reader through a strange fairy tale world. As the characters use fairy tales, mythology, and ritual to probe their own psyches, so too did I begin to look at what their tales of changelings meant in my life. Carol Goodman is a rare author who uses symbolism well, and actually seems to understand its purpose in literature, not just as a bauble to decorate writing, but as a way to make a connection with the reader on a deep and visceral level. The prose is beautiful and vivid, and Goodman brings to her writing wonderful and unexpected turns of phrase that bring her scenes to life.

The most impressive element in the book, in my opinion, is the halting relationship of Meg Rosenthal, the main character, with her teenaged daughter Sally. Their love and uncertainty, mixed with Meg's complex and tangled memories of her recently deceased husband, felt deeply human to me; unlike many authors who attempt this subject, Goodman has a light touch. She doesn't shove saccharine scenes into the reader's face, preferring to spin something altogether more gossamer, filled with things not said.

The mystery itself is very good, as well. Goodman builds the action of the current events around dreams and mistakes of the past with seamless ease. I had a hard time putting the book down, because I was always desperate to find out what happened next in Lily's diary. There are enough twists and turns to satisfy even the most exacting Whodunnit addict.

The only disappointment for me in this book, and the reason that I knocked off a star, was Meg's budding relationship with Callum. Set against the gentle, sensitive way that Goodman wove the main character's relationship with her daughter, her relationship with Callum feels garish and abrupt, with none of the trembling uncertainty, the false starts, the little pains and little joys of two people who have been hurt before daring to let each other in. What Goodman wrote for those two characters is standard mystery novel fare, but standard mystery novel fare doesn't belong in Arcadia Falls.

All in all, the book is incredible, and it's one that I plan to read again and again; I get the feeling that I'll get something new out of it each time. If you're a fan of gothic novels, of fairy tales, of mystery, or of the human condition, I highly recommend this book.

I loved this book from the first paragraph (but . . . well, read on). A recently-widowed woman and her sulking teenage daughter are driving, lost, through a deep fog, into a dark forest where the trees seem alive, reaching out ominously. The woman is starting a new job at an arts school founded many years ago by two women artists/authors, one of whom died mysteriously. The book's heroine and her daughter seem to be following the path of the lost girl at the beginning of the founders' most famous fairy tale.

And so the book begins with that perfect blend of spooky tension and real-life experience, raising some interesting and brave questions about relationships between women (and men) in general and between mothers and daughters. I had very high hopes for this book, and for the most part I was totally enthralled.

But it is only three-fourths of an absolutely fantastic book. The author repeats the same gimmicks over and over again, and it gets really annoying. [Spoiler alert! I'm trying not to give too much away here, but it may be more than you want to know if you intend to read the book.] There's a superfluous fairy tale romance. The same people are repeatedly maneuvered into the same dangerous situations at the same dangerous place, with disastrous (and predictable) results - - although the heroine is saved not once, but twice, by Prince Charming materializing out of the blue and rescuing her! Oh, come on. Also, one mystery in particular is solved in a most unsatisfying manner.

Still, I loved most of this book. I wish the author would rewrite the last sections wherein characters show some common sense, there's less repetition, and less of a fairy tale ending.

Carol Goodman's seventh novel begins slow and gentle, you hardly realize you're being pulled in until you find yourself wishing the train ride was a little longer, or the clock went a little slower so that you could keep reading.

Arcadia Falls is set in secluded, forested upstate New York at a private arts high school founded in the early 1900s by Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt. In the present, Meg Rosenthal finds herself at Arcadia after the death of her husband. Meg has fled suburban Long Island and taken her daughter Sally to Arcadia to save Sally from the troubled path she's chosen to cope with her father's death. Meg's study of fairytales, primarily the one written by the founders of Arcadia, leads her to hope this place, nestled among apple orchards and forests, will be a haven for her and Sally. But Meg's research leads her to discover that there is much more to Vera and Lily's story than what many believe. The whole of Arcadia is still haunted by Lily's untimely death back in 1947, and when a student of Arcadia dies in the same chilling manner as Lily, Meg begins to question if the beautiful outward appearance of Arcadia hides something more sinister in its past.

Three stories are told seamlessly in Goodman's novel; the story of Vera and Lily and the beginning of Arcadia; the story of their fairytale The Changeling Girl; and the story of Meg and Sally and present-day Arcadia. The fairytale motifs ripple in and out of these stories, with pagan rituals and themes of religion and consequence. But through it all is a beautiful tale; a tale of the fragile yet unbreakable bond of mother and daughter, of the fire and heat of passion and lust, of the beautiful sadness of art and life.

Set in such a secluded place, with so many lives centered on and surrounded by art, Arcadia Falls made me want to walk among its hallowed halls; stone and wood and secretive. With the exception of the general terrain surrounding Arcadia, I very much visualized the place and people all from Goodman's skillful writing and descriptions. Without going overboard, she made Arcadia a realistic place and time, with real people. The story is fabulously suspenseful and dark, but also beautifully tragic in a small way. It doesn't leave you guessing so much as just when you think you've figured it out, and you're feeling quite smart and proud of yourself, you're proven wrong.

Arcadia Falls will do for many readers what Elizabeth Kostova failed to do in her novel The Swan Thieves. Though I enjoyed The Swan Thieves, the general gripe from its readers is their confusion over the resolution of hidden secrets. Arcadia's secrets are plentiful, but they are resolved in an artistic and literary way, while still keeping the tension and suspense. I wanted to read this novel late into the evening to get to its conclusion. The end is quick and slightly jumbled, but the beauty of the story, the feeling of reading a good mystery, pulls you through.

5 stars

(I received this book from the publisher for review)