Customer Reviews

A House Divided (Charnwood Library)

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World War II may be over, but for many of the soldiers the battle has just begun. Captain Matthew Wellingham struggles with being blind, having much of his skin destroyed, and a rage bordering on insanity. Only the gentle caring of Nurse Elizabeth Ducksworth pulls him through his period of lunacy.

After being discharged from the hospital, Matt meets Liz and knows he is in love with her. Liz goes home to end her engagement to a big bully who tries to rape her. Only her brother stops him from succeeding. Liz and Matt see each other and confess their love for one another. Though his parents and gran adore her, the path to happiness is wrought with troubles caused by other males demanding that Liz be theirs despite her own desire for Matt.

The concept of a nurse falling in love with her patient suffering from several combat related injuries including blindness seems very interesting on the surface. Additionally, the legendary Catherine Cookson affectionately and vividly describes 1946 England. However, much of the conflict in the plot of A HOUSE DIVIDED comes from external sources, making the story line appear contrived rather than free flowing. No internal conflict between the lead couple exists in this tale, leading to the belief that this could have been a classic, but ultimately falls a bit short.

Harriet Klausner

In the end, after all is said and done, I'll admit the characters were lively, and the plot very good. But I was exhausted by the time I finished reading this book! It took forEVER to get to the point of things, and there was a lot of repeated dialogue. Imagine pulling on a string, hoping to get to the end, and you find yourself tugging, and tugging, and tugging in frustration, but to no avail. That's how I felt when reading this novel.

While browsing through the shelves at my local library, the title of this book - A House Divided - caught my attention. I think it brought to mind some passage in the Bible referring to the fact that a house divided cannot stand. At any rate, reading this book caused me to become a Catherine Cookson fan. Even though it isn't now my favorite book of her works, it must have been pretty great to cause me to go back over and over again in search of her stories. When I had read every book that both the local library and a library in a nearby town had to offer, I began ordering the ones I had not read through Amazon. I have now read over 80 of her more than a hundred novels and I am still searching. Great author!

I'll admit I'm a sucker for any romantic novel or film--no matter how corny or contrived. I read this book after enjoying the film adaptation of one of her other novels "The Moth." This was my introduction to the fiction of Catherine Cookson, but I must say I was sorely disappointed with the novel.

Although "A House Divided" is an interesting and quick read, I felt like I was reading a sanitized, British version of Danielle Steele. The plot is predictable yet hardly plausible, the dialogue is stilted and over dramatic/sentimental, and the characters are poorly developed. The reader could have used less plot action (it seemed like there were three or four separate stories here)and more narrative detail about the characters actions and thoughts. As it stands, we (the audience) cannot clearly envision the main characters nor truly understand their feelings or motivation. We have only the forced, shallow dialogue to clue us in to their actions. I didn't connect or empathize with the characters, and I found myself on several occasions rolling my eyes and thinking, "Oh, please." I felt like if I were given two weeks and a cask of good wine, I could have written this novel myself. If this is a fairly typical example of her writing, why is Cookson so revered in some literary circles? I am waiting for the print version of "The Moth" so perhaps my opinion will change, but I'm skeptical.

The bottom line is this: if you want to read a stirring tale about love between a nurse and soldier in wartime, read Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms"; if you want to read a delightful British tale of romance, conflict, and social criticism, read anything written by Edith Wharton, Henry James, or Jane Austen. You can definitely do better than "A House Divided."