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66 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The ghosts have not been laid to rest after all.", May 29, 2007
This review is from: Ghostwalk (Hardcover)
Rebecca Stott's "Ghostwalk" suggests a powerful connection between the past and the present. After historian Elizabeth Vogelsang is found drowned under mysterious circumstances, writer Lydia Brooke agrees to finish Vogelsang's manuscript about Isaac Newton. When she moves into Elizabeth's home to conduct her research, Lydia is shaken by a series of bizarre occurrences. Although the idea seems preposterous, Lydia begins to suspect that, for some inexplicable reason a spirit from the past may want to stop her from completing the book.
The story is told in flashback. Lydia, the first person narrator, is apparently recovering from a severe shock. By putting her thoughts in order, she may be attempting to clarify whatever happened that made her suddenly start believing in the supernatural. As a result of her work on Elizabeth's manuscript, Lydia realizes that the past can never completely be laid to rest. It is "like a stain in an old stone wall that seeps through the plaster." Elizabeth was immersed in the seventeenth century, and something or someone from that century may have killed her.
This story has three interwoven threads: one is the tangled relationship between Lydia and Elizabeth's son, Cameron. In spite of the fact that he is married, Cameron is a philanderer who has a long romantic history with Lydia. Although she left him before, Lydia cannot bring herself to reject Cameron when he reenters her life. The second is a series of ever-escalating attacks allegedly carried out by animal rights activists against Cameron (a neuroscientist and a fellow of Trinity College) and his colleagues, all of whom engage in animal experimentation. The third deals with Elizabeth's inquiries into Newton's life and work. Newton desired fame and recognition, but his prospects, at first, were dim. Could he have resorted to murder to achieve his goals? As Lydia tries to make sense of Elizabeth's fragmented notes, she learns about a mysterious Mr. F, who may be the key to understanding exactly what happened centuries ago.
"Ghostwalk" is well-researched, with marvelous passages about glassmaking, alchemy, and the sights and smells of Cambridge in 1664. The mystery is a bit jumbled, especially the tenuous link between deaths that occurred hundreds of years ago and those in the present. Stott juxtaposes realism with fantasy, and at times, the two coexist with difficulty. Nonetheless, Stott is a compelling storyteller, and she effectively moves her narrative along, using foreshadowing to prepare the reader for the strange developments to come.
The characters are all well-drawn. Cameron is a fanatic about his work and his dedication may have led him to make unwise choices. He is also a man who has grown comfortable with lying. Lydia is a brilliant and intuitive woman who will need great strength and courage to handle the many difficulties that thwart her at ever turn. Dilys Kite is a half-blind medium who helps both Elizabeth and Lydia communicate with people "from the other side." She is amusing in the way that she refers to ghosts as if they are standing right next to her, and her expertise proves invaluable to Lydia. Will Burroughs is a lovely and secretive young woman who may have more information about what is going on than she is willing to reveal.
Although this is an ambitious, provocative, and intriguing novel, it falters a bit at the end. Unexpected developments distort the plot so much that a willing suspension of disbelief becomes extremely difficult. Still, "Ghostwalk" is worth reading for its lyrical writing and the author's intriguing perspective on Newton's life and times. It is "the dark history buried beneath the myth of a great man."
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46 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a great work, June 3, 2007
This review is from: Ghostwalk (Hardcover)
The great work of alchemy is both the subject and the controlling metaphor for this novel. Lydia Brooke takes on the task of ghost-writing the last chapters and final draft of a study of Isaac Newton's involvement with alchemy written by her friend, Elizabeth Vogelsang (also the mother of her former lover.) Initially Lydia sees the major elements of that process as Elizabeth's existing research and writing on Newton and the author's ideas about where the study was going, ideas that must be recovered from notes and conversations with Elizabeth's friends. The work is undertaken in Elizabeth's studio, a veritable retort of a space, all glass and light - air bright with sun and fire, the earth of an apple orchard all around, and the river on the margins.
The reader soon realizes what Lydia refuses to recognize: Elizabeth's son, Cameron Brown, Lydia's lover for a decade past, is a major element of the process in the studio. So the process she is consciously working on is not the process actually in motion. Lydia is not the alchemist here; that is Elizabeth - or, more precisely, the historical past. Lydia and Cameron are the elements in the chemical marriage. The really brilliant decision to narrate the novel as first-person directly addressed to Cameron underscores this.
But for the great work to succeed, the elements and the adept must be pure, a point Stott makes with the Isaac Newton material. No one is pure in this novel. Lydia lies to herself, to her friends, to Cameron, lies unnecessarily, casually almost. Cameron lies enormously, to everyone, and cheats cruelly, as well as undertaking a truly wicked course of action. And yet, perhaps the most impure element here is Elizabeth - as a metaphor for the past -- whose unexplained death opens the book.
Although the past intrudes, sometimes violently, the novel isn't actually a time-slip, insofar as we are not taken back to the 17th century. But there are long passages from Elizabeth's manuscript describing life for Newton in Cambridge of the 1660s. One reviewer here objects to that, but the novel is about perspective - Elizabeth's and Lydia's as well as Newton's. Putting the reader unproblematically into the past wouldn't work here; it needs to be mediated, since the work of writing is all about mediating reality.
As I read the book, I did wonder about the decision to market it as a thriller. It has very frightening moments and a number of people die violent deaths. On those grounds, yes, it is a thriller. But thrillers as a genre are not especially intellectual, generally relying more on action than introspection (says I, their constant reader.) This book requires thinking. But it rewards even the lightest efforts with a vast array of gifts - the history of glass-making, life during the plague years, glimpses into the alchemical work of writing itself, college politics in the rarified air of Trinity during Newton's time, a powerful love story and the tattered edges of a massive moral dilemma, the fascinating Stourbridge Fair pulling goods and betters from all over Europe through the dark maze of Fen canals to the very edge of Cambridge.
What I most admire most about the novel is the exquisite blend of science and beyond-science, both in the specifics of the book Lydia is completing and in the things that happen to her in and around the studio. The constant text messages provide an elegant present-tense example of time and space being magiced away. The characters, as other reviewers note, are wonderfully drawn. But almost as great is my admiration for the places Stott chooses not to go. She uses the animal-rights people, but she doesn't let that powerful topic pull her off-target. And resisting both the lure and the considerable marketing value of the Rosicrucians and other esoteric secret societies is positively heroic.
Talking with my friends, I divide books into two categories: Good Books and murder mysteries. They read Good Books, mostly, best sellers and Booker Prize winners and the things that people talk about at dinner parties. I read murder mysteries and thrillers.
With Stott's novel, I find that I have accidentally read a Good Book.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
good story ruined by pointless literary devices, September 11, 2008
I won't go over the plot, because it has been stated, but there is indeed a good basic story here and that is what kept me reading LONG after I wanted to put the book down. I finally skimmed the second half, which is a shame, because the author can indeed turn a lovely phrase.
Any powerful writing by the author, however, gets lost in her many literary devices; devices which do not serve the story, but rather hinder it. The worst device is her annoying use of the second person point of view which serves no purpose except to distance the reader from the story. I felt like an interloper eavesdropping on the conversation between the narrator and her lover. When the writer switched to third person, it really pulled me out of the story. Not exactly the "suspension of disbelief" which fiction aims for. Other counterproductive literary devices included flashbacks embedded within flashbacks and way, way overwrought symbolism.
I also found it irritating that the narrator was so aloof and "above it all." I felt no sympathy for her, no emotional connection. Although we know her thoughts, we are not privy to her feelings. My gosh--she is being haunted by ghosts--can't we have a wee bit of terror? She accepts the haunting as if it were the morning dew on the grass.
Would I buy this book again? No. Read only if you are into literature which is written for its own sake, rather than with a reader in mind.
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