Customer Reviews

Mason's Retreat

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

AN EXCELLENT ACCOUNT OF AN AREA OF THE U.S. AND THE TIMES PRECEDING W.W.2.THE AUTHOR IS CLEARLY AWARE OF THE RURAL AREA OF THE EASTERN MARYLAND SHORE AND THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED THERE IN THE EARLY 1900'S. IWOULD DEFINITELY READ MORE BY THIS AUTHOR

A page-turning, psychological exploration,with the feel of a sprawling family epic in a spare 290 pages. Tilghman crafts insightful and absorbing portraits of an array of disparate characters to tell the story of Edward and Edith Mason, who return to America at the end of the Depression with their two sons after years living in England, and the musty Victorian atmosphere of both their family relationships and the expectations of their place in the world are a potent ingredient. Their fading pretentions of British class-superiority there have been devastated by bad business decisions and they have been forced to move to the yet-unseen Mason manse, the Retreat, on the Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. Set in the two years leading up to the outbreak of World War II, the tensions among the four Mason family members ripple throughout their community, to include friends, lovers, and most strikingly, to their employees, including two black housekeepers and the farmhand Robert, whose racial situation in the Depression-era, rural South is rendered to clear-headed, stunning effect in many of the book's scenes.

The assured writing and psychological surprises reminded me of Thomas Mallon's "Henry and Clara", and the gathering sense of doom and inexorable tragedy, mirrored in the offstage story of Europe in 1939 reminded me again and again of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", highest of praise from me.

Mr. Tilghman has created a gem. In a deceptively simplistic way, he allows the reader to explore the nuances of the characters' relationships. As someone who is familiar with the Eastern Shore, every detail evoked this solitary but lovely place. This is a book you'll reflect on long after the last page is read.

Our book club read this as a monthly selection and we liked it. The characters are well-developed and the story continues to keep your interst. The setting on the Eastern Shore of Maryland had a particular interest for our Maryland book club but it is also informative for those not familiar with the "shore". The description of the time in history and the various relationships between different classes and races only adds to the character of the story.

Christopher Tilghman's ability to describe the feelings and perceptions of each character with incredible clarity allows the reader to experience, not just read. This is a book about people, their relationships and their struggles to balance the need to live the life dealt to them, while striving for the lives they truly want.

Mason's Retreat is a book that transports you into the world of Edward Mason and his family each time you pick it up.
I enjoyed this book just as much as other highly regarded books such as Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres".

I grew up on the Delmarva Peninsula and enjoyed Christopher Tilghman's writing about the Chesapeake Bay, so I was interested in reading Mason's Retreat. However, the book was very sad and depressing. I did something that I rarely do - I did not finish the book because it was so depressing. While I thoroughly enjoyed the description of a sea voyage which happens at the beginning of the book and the descriptions of Chesapeake Bay life, I simply had no interest in reading an unrelentingly depressing novel about a failure of a man who managed to cause amazing suffering to his family and truth be told, everyone around him.

Wonderfully drawn characters and a masterfully haunting sense of time and place. Characters include very real children (so much of literature is made up only of a world of erudite adults -- clearly not the planet I live on). I think of this book every time I go to the Eastern shore. Does anyone know if the author is in fact related to the folks that Tilighman is named after?

How does a slender 30-something mother of two make a real life for herself, when her loudmouth misfit ... of a philandering husband departs for England and a dashing young yachtsman comes calling? Tend to her garden? If her husband is her choice, how does she aid him to overcome the disrespect of practically everyone who knows him, including her parents, the hired help, even their teenage son? There are the makings of a good story here.
Unfortunately, I found this first novel to be very much a freshman effort. The main failing was lack of gut-wrenching scenes, those that draw the reader in emotionally. I recall only one, and the author rushed through that one. The characters are hardly able to engage with one another and remain disconnected throughout. Most disappointing was the treatment of the Mason family estate, Mason's Retreat, which was never allowed to reveal its dark secrets.