The House on Olive Street [Mass Market Paperback]

Robyn Carr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1999

After the death of a close friend, four women (all writers) gather at her house for a weekend to sort through her personal papers, as well as to come to terms with what their own lives have become. Reissue.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When novelist Gabby Marshall dies, she leaves a letter asking her four closest friends, all writers, to organize her literary remains. In the process, they take refuge from their own lives in Gabby's cozy home in Sacramento, Calif. Unsentimental spinster Elly fears her highbrow friends won't accept her suitor, Ben, a loving but unsophisticated farmer. Bestselling Sable escapes the sudden exposure of her tarnished past; Beth is leaving an abusive husband; Barbara Ann is running away from a home full of slovenly men. Introductory chapters are slow, but once the protagonists move into their "halfway house for insane women" the book comes to life. The women's feisty, bluntly honest exchanges ring with credibility and charm; the minor characters that eddy around themABarbara Ann's lovably clueless husband; Ceola, the late Gabby's pistol-toting momAare drawn with deftness and affection. Though conventional in outline, Carr (Mind Tryst) offers a well-written, warm-hearted story and a genuinely fun read. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

April 16

Fair Oaks, California

Elly sensed something was wrong immediately, but since she was not a woman who lived by her instincts, she did nothing. She pushed the dark, ominous feeling aside and made believe that it was her abhorrence for surprise parties that brought on this edginess. She held the grocery bag that Sable had given her and stood, obediently, on the walk leading to Gabby's front door.

This was Sable's idea—the surprise birthday party for Gabby's fiftieth birthday. It was April sixteenth, the day after taxes were due. Gabby was an Aries, but lacked many of the typical character flaws of the astrological sign. She was neither arrogant, nor selfish, nor controlling. She possessed a raw courage, and she had a rare zest for life. Gabby turned fifty today—a beautiful, vibrant, exciting fifty. Fifty on the brink of still greater things, not on the declining side of life. Elly, fifty-eight, had not had such youth or vibrancy at twenty.

Something was wrong.

Elly heard the ticktocking of Sable's heels on the flagstone walk. She, too, carried a grocery bag. There were two more bags in the trunk, all filled with the makings of a lavish champagne brunch. The idea was to arrive just prior to Gabby's waking hour—somewhere around 11:00 a.m. It was ten-thirty. They hadn't even considered coming earlier. Gabby, for all her joy of life, was as mean as a junkyard dog in the early morning.

"Don't get Daisy barking," Sable commanded in a whisper, though they stood several feet from the front door. "We don't want Gabby to know what's up until the others arrive." The others were Barbara Ann Vaughan and Beth Mahoney. The five of them formed an intimate little writers' group who relied on each other for support, critique, industry news, celebration and whatever the publishing industry threw at them. Their works were diverse, ranging from mystery to romance to academic. Gabby's house was where they always met.

Daisy. That was the trouble, Elly realized. Gabby's nine-year-old golden retriever was whining at the door. Not much more than a miserable squeak. Added was the occasional scrape of her heavy paw; she wanted out. This was not typical. If Daisy heard people outside the door, she usually got all excited. She'd woof politely, but loudly.

"Listen," Elly ordered. "That's Daisy. She's not barking."

"She probably knows it's us," Sable suggested.

Elly put her bag down on the walk and crept nearer the door. Daisy had known them all since puppyhood and it had never stopped her from barking before. She was crying!

"Eleanor!" Sable whispered furiously. She rushed up behind Elly, snatching at her sleeve. "Come away from that door! You're going to spoil it!"

"Something's wrong," Elly said loudly, punching the doorbell.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The dog still had not started barking. "Listen," Elly said. "Hear anything?"

"Not yet, but any second we're going to hear Gabby cursing on her way to the—"

"Daisy still isn't barking. Listen to her fuss. Something's wrong." Eleanor began digging through her enormous shoulder bag for her keys. She was the only one among the women who had a key to Gabby's house, given to her years ago so she could check on things while Gabby was out of town. She'd had it ever since, but never had an occasion like this in which to use it.

"Eleanor," Sable groaned. "Shit. You're going to ruin everything. What do you think you're doing?"

Elly rang the bell a couple more times, but didn't wait for a response. She slid the appropriate key into the lock. Daisy came bounding through the door, rushing past the two of them, not looking back. Out into the freedom. Out onto the grass. She looked back over her shoulder guiltily as she squatted to pee not three feet from the front walk. She'd been ready to explode, obviously.

"Jesus," Sable muttered.

"Gabby?" Eleanor called into the house. "Gabrielle? Gabby?"

"She's probably still asleep," Sable said, but she said so hopefully. "Slept through the doorbell and the yelling. Just like her. She sleeps like the—" Sable stopped herself.

Elly frowned over her shoulder briefly, then walked into the house ahead of Sable. Daisy bounded past them again, in the other direction, into the house. The sound of talking could be heard inside—television talking. Elly called out a couple more times, but softly, suspiciously.

They found her in the family room. She was lying on the couch, eyes closed. One foot was on the floor and she had a sheaf of papers on her lap. Probably manuscript pages. From a distance of three feet she could be mistaken for a sleeping girl; she was slight of build, fair complected and had hardly any gray streaking her curly, honey-blond hair. On the sofa table beside her was a can of diet soda, a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin. By the time they got there Daisy had taken her place again beside the couch, guarding. She looked up at them mournfully, as though she knew.

Eleanor gasped and rushed to Gabby's side, her large purse slipping off her shoulder and crashing to the floor as she knelt. She frantically touched Gabby's brow. Sable's hand rose to cover her mouth, her eyes disbelieving and her head already shaking denial. Eleanor touched Gabby's cheeks, her neck, her hands, muttering over and over, My God My God My God, then, Oh No Oh No No No, while Sable, stunned and terrified, stood frozen, not breathing. Elly stopped touching Gabby after a few seconds and straightened herself stoically. She turned toward Sable as rigidly as a soldier. "She's dead, Sable. She's been dead for some time."

"No," Sable whispered.

Elly nodded, frowning, because by then she had noticed there was a smell of some kind. Eleanor had talked to Gabby the previous afternoon; it wasn't as though she'd begun to decompose. There were no visible signs of blood, bruises or marks. It was the smell of death and it's accompanying atrocities.

"Go back outside," Elly said calmly. "Wait for Barbara and Beth. Don't let them come in. I'm going to have to call the police."

"The police?"

"It wasn't old age, Sable," Eleanor said, her voice cracking. "What would you suggest?"

Sable's eyes had taken on a stricken, panicked gleam. She hugged herself to keep from shaking or being sick. Not sick with disgust, but sick with horror. Her dearest friend. Dead before her very eyes. Sable couldn't answer. Her face went white.

"Don't fall apart on me now," Eleanor instructed calmly but firmly. "Just don't. Hang on for a while. I'll join you outside in a minute. Now go."

Eleanor walked into the kitchen and picked up the cordless. She dialed 911. She figured whatever had killed Gabby hadn't been homicidal… and even if it had been, it was safe to use the phone. She didn't care very much about fingerprints and all that. The cause of death, she had already decided, hadn't been murder, but rather theft. Elly's dearest treasure had just been stolen. "Yes, ah, my name is Eleanor Fulton and I've just let myself into my friend's house to find that she's…she's… expired. Expired, I said. Dead. Dead for some time, I guess. She's very cold and white. I think it must have been natural—a heart attack perhaps. What I mean is, there doesn't seem to be any… any sign of anything. No, no, she's only fifty." She did not add "today." She noticed that the message light on Gabby's answering machine was blinking madly, something that would no doubt help the police determine how long her dearest friend had been gone. She wanted to play the messages, to hear what final words had been spoken to Gabby while she lay on the sofa, dying to late-night TV. Birthday well-wishers? Instead, she gave the police dispatcher the address and asked that there please be no sirens. This was all bad enough without flashing lights and sirens.

When she replaced the receiver she realized her hand was shaking almost violently. She tucked it under her arm like an annoying old sock and took a deep breath. She would have to call Don, Gabby's ex-husband, but she'd wait until after the police had come to the house. She might even be the one to tell the children—David and Sarah—but not without Don. She would see to that. Don would manage, somehow, to be civil to his children, or Elly might physically make her point about it. Maybe just coldcock him, something she'd had an impulse to do for years now. Gabby was much more forgiving than Eleanor.

But before she would let herself enjoy the prospect of decking Don, she went back to Gabby. She stared down at her. Over twenty years, she thought in desolation. They were young together, even though Elly felt she, herself, had never been young. They had survived things that should have killed them. The others—Sable, Barbara and Beth—might love Gabby equally, but they hadn't had her quite as long. Hadn't been through quite as much with her.

Eleanor picked up her heavy purse and looped the strap over her shoulder before she dug inside for a handkerchief. She felt her eyes and nose drip before she was even aware she was crying, and she sopped up her leaking pain as best she could, dipping the linen under her glasses.

Gabby didn't look particularly peaceful to her, or maybe that was just her own emotions projected. Was that a slight frown? Had Gabby's face recently taken on those lines without Eleanor noticing? It was lividity, she finally realized, the color drained from Gabby's face, her lips falling slack and drying out. It was outrageous that Gabby be the first to go; she was the youngest at heart of them all. Everyone depended on her to a fault. Her children still needed her desperately, and Don, divorced from her for over fifteen years, relied on her constantly. And God, not even Gabby knew how Elly needed her. Maybe we wore her out, Elly thought. But no. Gabby had never seemed worn. No... --This text refers to an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 402 pages
• Publisher: Mira (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155166545X
• ISBN-13: 978-1551665450
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,114,968 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robyn Carr is the New York Times & USA Today Bestselling author of many novels, including The Virgin River Series

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars wonderful story of four friends, April 27, 2000

By 

pontmarie (SF Bay Area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House on Olive Street (Mass Market Paperback)

The book opens rather ominously with the death of fifty-year-old Gabby, a writer whose life is closely intertwined with that of four other women, all of them successful writers, and all of them with dark little secrets begging to be revealed. Their grim task, as outlined in a letter Gabby leaves behind for close friend Eleanor, is for Elly to go through Gabby's papers, personal documents, unpublished manuscripts, etc., and deal with it all. As Elly enlists the help of the other three women and they settle down to fulfill their late friend's final request, they begin sharing parts of their lives that have remained hidden through all their years of friendship.

The four women are wonderfully human, non-cardboard characters who deal with the little - and sometimes big - struggles of life and find succor and support in one another.

We have Barbara Ann, the midlist romance writer who seems to be the one on top of it all - happy family, book after book hitting the shelves - and who is, in fact, about to explode from frustration. While Barbara Ann simmers, Sable Tennet is discovering life without make-up. This polished woman (think Danielle Steel's career and Sable the Wrestler's looks) finds that she can live in sweats and knit shorts, walk around barefoot and not lose face in front of her friends. Meanwhile, mystery writer Beth finds her writing to be the only refuge from her abusive pig of a husband, until the strength of the other women begins to slowly seep through her. Last but not least, intellectual Elly, the academic writer who hates children, is tired and afraid of continuing her life as she has lived it for years - keeping everyone at a distance.

As summer progresses, the women begin facing their inner demons; Beth, the youngest and shyest of the four women, makes a decision but keeps the reader guessing as to whether she will go back on her word. For Sable, it's facing the ghosts, coming to terms with events from nearly twenty years ago and setting free the girl she once was. While Barbara Ann makes a drastic change in her life after she ends up in jail because of her inconsiderate, slovenly family, no one expects dry spinster Elly to change much, and in the end, her story is all the sweeter for it. Gabby's house gets a little more cramped with the arrival of her mother, Ceola, with eight husbands to her name and a knack for manipulating the four women into catering to her every need. Four healthy women are not enough to contend with Ceola's softly voiced demands and she ends up staying, and becoming part and parcel of the group.

There is also work to be done, however, and while contracts are drawn and manuscripts resuscitated, a single masterpiece emerges: Gabby's own love story, told in a book that will be fiction to everyone else, but to the friends, it will provide the final chapter to the story they only knew bits and pieces of.

I liked this book - a lot. While the ending might seem rather tidy considering how real each woman's set of problems was, it is not totally unrealistic. Each of them has changed for the better, but has not lost what made her unique in the process. While Fiction rather than Romance is still not my "thing," I will make an exception in the case of author Carr, and will definitely check out her next book

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves a Big Success, January 6, 2001

By 

HeyJudy "heyjudy" (East Hampton, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The House on Olive Street (Mass Market Paperback)

So often, one opens the new novels written by members of that small and exclusive club of best-selling authors, and the entire book is nothing more than re-cycled garbage. Maybe the garbage once was fresh and new, but after the umpteenth airing, there's nothing to recommend it. Still, these writers have become brand names, so their publishers give each of their new books the big send-off with the requisite advertising budget and a publicity tour. And faithful readers buy these books without hesitation.

Then, one stumbles upon a gem, a little perfect gem. THE HOUSE ON OLIVE STREET is just such a gem. Its author deserves the book tour, the big ad budget. Instead, this book simply will have to make its own way on the paperback racks. That's fair neither to Robyn Carr, who wrote HOUSE, nor to the legion of women who look forward to reading good fiction and who should be assisted in finding her novel more easily.

This novel has all the elements: A half-dozen complex characters, real and well-drawn, multiple plots, lively prose. The underlying subtext is about values and about love. None of the storylines descend to cliche. Unlike many similar novels, the ending is not entirely predictable, either, much to Ms. Carr's credit.

The thread that weaves HOUSE together is a writers' group, with some of the members single, some married, some childless, some with large broods, each of whom writes a different kind of book and all of whom support and nurture the others through every kind of crisis.

THE HOUSE ON OLIVE STREET deserves a big success. Read it, you'll like it.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific piece of women's fiction, January 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The House on Olive Street (Mass Market Paperback)

I've enjoyed all of Robyn Carr's romances, but approached this with a bit of caution since it's more women's fiction. I should have had more faith in Carr's talent. This is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in months, filled with beautifully constructed characters, relationships, emotion, and humor. (Poor Barbara Ann with her testosterone-ridden household of five hulking males was as funny as she was poignant.) The insights into different aspects of writers' lives were also dead on. I hope we see many, many more equally fine women's fiction novels from Ms. Carr.