A novel about Drumveyn, a family house that awakens again through the lives of the inhabitants. At the beginning, there is only Madeleine, the recent widow of a tyrannical man. She discovers she can break free of the behaviour expected of her and starts a new life by adopting waifs and strays.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
New author Alexandra Raife makes a stunning debut with this heartwarming contemporary family saga. The novel starts slowly, but don't be put off; once you become engrossed in the daily drama of the Napier family you will wish that you, too, could make a pilgrimage to Drumveyn, a crumbling manor tucked away in a Scottish glen where unknown dreams find fulfillment and family love enriches everyone who comes within its nucleus. You won't want this sweet and romantic story of unexpected love to end. Thank goodness there will be a sequel!
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Drumveyn had me hooked from the first page' -- Barbara Erskine 'Warm, friendly, involving ...lovely' -- Reay Tannahill 'A real find ... the genuine storyteller's flair' -- Mary Stewart 'An absorbing story with a perfectly painted background' -- Financial Times 'The power of a natural-born storyteller' -- The Lady 'A welcome new storyteller' -- Rosamunde Pilcher
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enoyable for a rainy weekend, but has one interfering flaw.,
By
This review is from: Drumveyn (Paperback)
A thoroughly enjoyable read on a weekend when it's raining, everyone you know is out of town, there's nothing on TV and you need a book you know you won't put down. I can only give this book four stars because Alexandra Raife uses a storytelling technique that somewhat ruins the read: She uses an excessive amount of flashbacks to tell the story instead of allowing us to experience events with the characters as they are happening. Often, she will start a paragraph with the character having leapt forward in the story only to quickly flashback and tell us how that character got there by using sentences like, "Madeleine had to smile to herself as she remembered Lisa telling her this morning that..." This technique begins to appear as laziness in storytelling, as this "summing up" will certainly end up meaning that in-depth details about an event are going to be left out in a way that they would not have been had we simply been allowed to watch events unfold. Imagine if, in "Pillars of the Earth", Ken Follett had decided to summarize events by having us experience them through different characters remembering things in flashback form. Instead of 1150 pages, we would have had 550. Raife had the makings of an 800-page saga: Family intrigue, divorce, abandonment on several levels, the large family estate, outsiders who infiltrate the inner circle, etc. Why not make use of these wonderful "saga tools"? For those who have read it, imagine if we had SEEN Stephen invite Lisa to come live with him instead of having this fact revealed through Madeleine's flashback of Lisa TELLING Madeleine, "I'm going to live with Stephen. Please be happy for me." We are deprived of at least 40-50 pages of romance and story development by not being allowed to watch the relationship between Lisa and Stephen unfold but rather having it "summed up" in a flashback. However, "Drumveyn" does entertain. That alone makes it worth four stars!!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raife's First Is Still Her Best,
By Wendy Kaplan (Houston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Drumveyn (Paperback)
Having read just about all of Brit writer Alexandra Raife's other books, I finally treated myself to her very first, "Drumveyn," and I was simply enchanted.Here is a deceptively simple tale of a modern Scottish family, far-flung and near to home, facing the typical stresses of everyday life, from divorce to infertility to adoption and all the rest. The home base is Drumveyn, a family seat fairly crumbling under the moldy tapestry of its ancient past--and the borderline cruel rules and regulations of the domineering father, Sir Charles Napier, who has just died when the book opens. Charles' widow, Madeleine, is a forty-something attractive woman whose true nature has been beaten down over the years not only by her husband, but by her horrid (and thankfully dead) mother-in-law, Lady Napier, and even the servants. Madeleine's life is stifling, which is why her two married children have long-ago escaped the home front. But suddenly, everything changes, as circumstances bring first an orphaned aristocratic South American child, and then a surprisingly refreshing cast of characters, to Drumveyn. Madeleine begins to come alive--and the resulting story is wonderful. I was sad when the book ended, and glad to know that Raife has written a sequel, which I missed, and plan to order immediately!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a FEEL GOOD novel !,
This review is from: Drumveyn (Paperback)
If I could rate this book at over 5 stars I would....it is so well written and deals with relationships with family members in an honest and loving way. Totally took me away -- and in this day and age what a blessing......keep writing those novels.....wonderful !
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