The House at Midnight: A Novel [Hardcover]

Lucie Whitehouse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 3, 2008

On an icy winter weekend, seven friends celebrate New Year’s Eve at Stoneborough, a grand manor in the English countryside. They’ve been brought together by Lucas Heathfield, a young man who recently inherited the property after the tragic death of his uncle Patrick. Though still raw from the loss of his last family member, Lucas welcomes this tight-knit group of friends to the estate he hopes will become their home away from home–an escape from London where they can all relax and rekindle the revelry of their college days.

Lucas’s best friend, Joanna, finds herself oddly affected by the cavernous manse, with its lavish mythological ceiling mural and sprawling grounds, and awakened to a growing bond with Lucas. Much to her surprise, he reveals that he’s loved her for years. But as they begin to find their way from friendship to romance, Joanna can’t shake the feeling that the house is having its own effect on them.

Back in London, Joanna is stunned when Lucas announces that he and their impetuous friend Danny are moving into Stoneborough full-time. Her concern seems justified as Lucas, once ensconced, becomes completely ensnared in the turbulent past that seems to haunt the house–a past that is captured in old movie reels featuring Lucas’s now-dead family: his charismatic uncle Patrick, his lovely mother, Claire, and his golden-boy father, Justin.

Over one decadent, dramatic year, as the friends frequently gather at the shadowed residence, secrets slide out and sexual tensions escalate, shattering friendships and forever changing lives. And all the while, the house cradles a devastating secret.

By turns taut and sensual, mesmerizing and disturbing, The House at Midnight is a gripping psychological novel that pulls the reader into the thrall of its ominous atmosphere. Newcomer Lucie Whitehouse has written a tense and captivating story that will linger long after the final, shocking pages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At 30, Londoner Joanna still spends her free time with her Oxford college friends, now with burgeoning careers and all on the cusp of real adulthood. Lucas, Joanna's closest friend and prolonged crush, inherits Stoneborough Manor, a huge and imposing house in the Cotswold countryside filled with priceless art, where all the college friends are to spend every weekend together. The first visit, on New Year's Eve, doesn't start well, as the Londoners get lost. To Joanna, the manor has a threatening and unsettling aura, and indeed, the big, dark, vaguely confusing house with its secrets and disappointments works well as an allegory for moving into the responsibilities and fears of growing up. Joanna and her friends proceed to deal with the unknown, some well, others destructively. A focus on the shifting relationships and loyalties doesn't leave much room for plot, but Joanna's voice is engaging, and Londoner Whitehouse, making her debut, manages to generate a lot of interest in the somewhat flat Four Weddings and a Funeral-esque ensemble: she gets the insecurities, pedigrees and Cotswold locale spot on. Unfortunately, this promising first effort features a truncated ending that is less evocative than jarring. (June)
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Review

Advance praise for The House at Midnight

“The House at Midnight is a stunning piece of modern gothic. Gripping, accomplished, and ultimately mesmerizing, it represents the arrival of a major literary talent.”
–John Connolly, author of The Book of Lost Things

“A book that holds you, and an atmosphere which has you in thrall.”
–Susan Hill, author of The Pure in Heart

“Gripping and accomplished.”
–Barbara Trapido, author of Frankie & Stankie

“A fine piece of high gothic, as dark and delicious as bitter chocolate, and also a moving lament for the loss of youth. Whitehouse is an English middle-class Donna Tartt, skillfully building layers of menace. I was spellbound.”
–Kate Saunders, author of The Little Secret

“Atmospheric and compelling–an impressive debut.”
–Joanna Briscoe, author of Sleep with Me

“An exciting, romantic, gripping story of secrets and suspense–at once modern and classic in its form and content. I predict a big hit!”
–Lesley Glaister, author of Losing It

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (June 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034549931X
• ISBN-13: 978-0345499318
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #440,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Friendship, sex, forbidden love, betrayal... what more could you want?, June 30, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House at Midnight: A Novel (Hardcover)

What happens when you drop a group of elitist (read: self-indulgent) Oxford post-graduates in a sprawling, three-storied stone manor in the English countryside, and supply them with copious amounts of expensive liquor and a smorgasbord of sordid secrets? According to Lucie Whitehouse, complete chaos. If you, dear reader, are a fan of characters who betray each other at every step, ongoing relationship melodrama and salacious plot twists piled on at the end, then Lucie Whitehouse's creepy and deliciously macabre debut, THE HOUSE AT MIDNIGHT, is just the novel for you.

The story begins as Joanna --- the book's earnest but somewhat vapid narrator --- and her college chums are driving up from London for a mini reunion of sorts to celebrate New Year's Eve with their friend, Lucas, who recently inherited his uncle's posh estate after his mother died, his father disappeared and was presumed dead, and his uncle committed suicide. As soon as they arrive, a fire is lit, drinks are poured, and the crew gets down to the business of reacquainting themselves and reminiscing about the good old days.

From the start, it's clear that the friends shoulder their fair share of baggage. Lucas and Joanna are best friends but realize their feelings for each other might be of the romantic sort. When they finally get together, all seems glorious and happy-go-lucky until Lucas's precocious and pompous childhood pal, Danny, finds out --- and gets jealous. Is he a homosexual? Not exactly (despite his fling with well-intentioned Michael). But that still doesn't prevent him from threatening Joanna, telling her to keep her paws in check --- or else.

Then there's Martha, Joanna's straight-laced and responsible roommate who falls for Danny, knowing full well that he's a womanizer and a cheat. (But the sex is good, so why not?) And Rachel, the fashion maven who brings along her new boyfriend, hunky Greg, who gets along swimmingly with the others --- especially Joanna. Michael, who also slept with Danny, rounds out the group, until Diana shows up. But that's not until later.

Over the next few hundred pages, the friends travel back and forth from London to Oxfordshire, spending weekends in the lap of luxury while generally driving themselves crazy and acting like spoiled children. One minute, Lucas is a sensible young man with a career. The next, he quits his job and moves with Danny to live in Stoneborough Manor full-time. The two dabble in writing novels and playing movie director, but who are they kidding? They'd much rather slack off and get boozy.

Meanwhile, Joanna is having second thoughts about her relationship with the changed Lucas. So it isn't surprising when she's caught kissing Greg in the moonlight. All hell breaks loose upon that discovery (including Rachel's disappearance from the rest of the book), and the group's fragile equilibrium irreparably shatters --- especially after the surprise appearance of the aforementioned Diana, Lucas's other childhood acquaintance, whose debutante mother hobnobbed with Lucas's parents/uncle before they died.

If that's not enough (and of course it isn't, given Whitehouse's style), in a cacophony of shocking events (some easily foreseen, others delightfully unexpected), Lucas finds out that his family history is not what he thought it was, and the news turns his --- and everyone else's --- world upside down.

Overall, THE HOUSE AT MIDNIGHT falls somewhere between a modern-day (albeit twisted) THE GREAT GATSBY, a V.C. Andrews novel, and the brat pack movie St. Elmo's Fire. Although Whitehouse's characters may appear two-dimensional at times, her ability to spin a wickedly suspenseful tale that underscores human weaknesses and gives free reign to unleashed depravity will entertain even the more skeptical reader.

--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A rocky first novel, July 10, 2008

By 

K. Huff (Radnor, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The House at Midnight: A Novel (Hardcover)

The House at Midnight is the first novel by British author Lucie Whitehouse. Neo-Gothic in tone, the story is primarily about the relationships between seven friends from college: Joanna (the narrator), Lucas, Danny, Michael, Martha, Rachel, and Greg. When Lucas inherits Stoneborough Manor from his uncle Patrick, he encourages his friends to treat the mysterious old house as their own. Soon, Joanna finds herself in a romantic relationship with Lucas, he decides to move in with his parasitic friend Danny, and things get trickier when Joanna discovers Rachel and Greg in a compromising position on the floor one night.

There's a whole slew of interchangeable (and sticky) relationships between these seven characters, characterized by a lot of drinking and drug-taking. It took the author six years to write, and I get the feeling that she began the novel thinking that she originally intended the characters to be younger than they eventually turned out to be. Although approaching the age of thirty, all of these people act as though they're still in college and trying to figure out their lives. The novel is heavy on the relationships between these characters and not so heavy on character development and plot. Even Joanna, the narrator, isn't a particularly attractive character; she's a little bland, and blasé about her career, relationships, and future.

I picked up this novel because I thought that this would be a Gothic type of novel, similar to Barbara Vine's work; but the key to writing a Gothic novel is using subtlety, which this book doesn't have. It seems as though the reader is repeatedly hit over the head with how eerie Stoneborough Manor is, or appears to be. Also, the ending, while truly unexpected, seemed a little bit tacked-on. I give the author props for writing about what she knows best, and for the intriguing premise of the novel; but the execution of that premise ultimately falls flat. This book has been compared to Donna Tartt's The Secret History; and while I see superficial similarities between the two books, The House at Midnight doesn't even come close to the other.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Kept waiting for something to happen, March 31, 2011

By 

Irish Girl (Milwaukee, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House at Midnight: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was looking forward to reading this because I like suspense and ghost stories, neither of which I found in the book. The plot was very slow. There were so many ridiculous story lines that I think at one point I must have rolled my eyes. By the last 1/4 of the book I was skipping complete paragraphs because I just wanted it to be over. I didn't care what happened to the characters. Awful.