Customer Reviews

The House of a Thousand Candles (Library of Indiana Classics)

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

 

 

I've been enjoying this book for the last 35 years. It is always a treat. I easily recommend it to anyone that wants to escape into the past for a few days.
This book inspired me to collect as many of Meredith Nicholson's writings as I could; but in my opinion, the rest fail to meet this high-water mark.

"The House of a Thousand Candles" by Meredith Nicholson was a delightful read. Well-written and quick-paced, the tale had just the right mixture of characters and circumstances, mystery and suspense, romance and skullduggery, to make for an enjoyable read. The only part that stretched credulity was the shootout in the library and why no one was seriously wounded or killed with all those bullets flying around. Other than that and the usual eBook typos (although minimal) and the strange over-usage of exclamation points (the 1909 style of punctuation?), the book was worth the time to read.

The highly mannered style and aggrandized gaze of Nicholson's world nevertheless delights and enchants the reader with the silken kaleidoscope of sensory values pulled through narrow golden hoop of the written page. Indiana's lace-edged tintype history gleams with romance, mystery, substance. I am proud to own this signed first edition, and collect Nicholsons where others have imprudently overlooked them. The story begins as the hero enters the scene, nodding at the criminal foil, the stately and perfect heroine(American style if you please,) and the lifelong friend of the old school. Never again shall a writer look to the future and look back over the shoulder of American History with such finesse. A grand mystery, may Hollywood never grab it!

I can give this book no higher praise than I have read it every year for the last 15 years, and have never tired of it. It describes my utopia.