As she becomes increasingly involved with the spirit of a long-dead poet, a lonely young girl withdraws more and more from the real world.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Wyndcliffe review,
By Shannon Mele (Hurst, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wyndcliffe: A story of suspense (Hardcover)
An excellent ghost love story, between a fifteen year old girl and the ghost of a young man living in her new home. Touching and endearing. Annie is moved to desolate house near the cliffs in England. She is unhappy in the move and depressed, until she meets John, a ghost from the previous century who died tragically after his heart is broken by a faithless girl. He befriends Annie, an unusual relationship forms that is happy and sad. I will not give away the ending, but the story continues in the book "Sing and scatter daisies." I highly recommend this for the younger teen generation.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Suspence doesn't mean scary,
By
This review is from: The Wyndcliffe: A story of suspense (Hardcover)
I ran across this book in my high school library when I was fourteen, and I read it in part or in whole at least twice every year until I graduated and had to leave it behind. While the subtitle promises this book to be a "story of suspence," it is not suspenceful in the American connotation of the word. It isn't terrifying or a pot boiler. Rather it is a story of tensions within or between the characters who become inextricably linked to The Wyndcliffe.Anna Hennessy, the fifteen-year-old main character whose family has moved from London to southern England, first suffers under the anxiety of loving the austere beauty of The Wyndcliffe while enduring the loneliness of being an introverted stranger in a strange land. What makes it worse is that her older sister Ruth fits right in socially and disregards Anna's culture shock as akin to laziness. Ruth becomes the antagonist in this tale, a parallel thwarter of joy to the women John Hollis knew when he was alive. When Anna meets John, the spirit of an unaccomplished, Romantic Era poet, everything changes for her as well as for her new friend. With someone else to talk to, their loneliness eases. But the dead cavorting with the living? A man who has existed for 150 years trying to relate to a naive girl who hasn't yet survived two decades? Theirs is the relationship that is the main source of tension in this story. In fact, their tension exists on three levels: spiritual, intellectual, and physical (even subtly sexual). And how their relationship is resolved in the end serves only as a poignant, slight relief between them and for the reader. There are other well-springs of tension in this book. John is faced with the challenge of trusting another human being again, exorcising his own "ghosts" from the past. Simon, the oldest and most quick-witted Hennessy sibling, struggles with treating his youngest sister as a maturing woman rather than a dreamy pre-adolescent. He relentlessly pooh-poohs everything spiritual while also trying to understand why his favorite sister has projected her pain into a ghost story. Ruth on the other hand never seems to struggle within herself. Everything, at some point in the story, even the weather, becomes her deliberate adversary. Despite the lack of growth in this character, Ruth is not boring. Large chunks of the story are told from her point of view, and she is a clever, if inordinately selfish, person. The narratives in this story are lush, detailed, and definitely extra-sensory whenever John makes an appearance. But the good ol' dirty earth is not forgotten. It is featured, in fact, and is occasionally the subject of conservationist commentary through the mouths of the two oldest main characters: John and Simon, done so cleverly, subtly, and beautifully that one doesn't realize a sermon is being preached until the plate of sacrifice is passed before you, urging you to be unlike the schmucks who consume the earth and make living in it worse for the rest of us. In a smart-aleck sort of way, these moments can create guilt-thereby tension-in the reader himself. Effective books shape one's character. The best books shape one's character for the benefit of others. This is one of those books. In high school, I learned from this book the difference between greed and need, the development of trust between friends, the respect that is necessary to sustain love. I first learned about the poet John Keats from this story and discovered an enduring interest in history and literature. So, of course, I recommend this book...if you can find it. But that is another sort of tension.
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