- Paperback: 348 pages
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (May 1 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0446582867
- ISBN-13: 978-0446582865
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 2.5 x 22.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 136 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,402,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The startling opening sentence (My wife of more than 45 years shot herself yesterday afternoon) and the compelling voice of narrator James Farrell draw the reader into the emotional vortex of this accomplished debut novel by a 20-year-old British writer. We learn immediately that his long marriage to Sarah Harcourt was not an affair of the heart for James. His love for Sarahs insecure, fragile cousin, Emma, is the substance of the flashback narrative, which deftly evokes the obsessive passion of first love, meanwhile alluding heavily to sin and guilt. When James meets Ella Harcourt he is about to graduate from Oxford, and to begin serious study of the violin. English-born but raised in America, Ella is heiress to the family seat, Seton Castle, which Sarah patently covets. Moreover, Ella has stolen the man Sarah loves, an eminently acceptable member of the English upper class, and is about to announce their engagement. Recognizing that they are meant for each other, Ella and James conspire to break the engagement, meanwhile meeting secretly and enjoying supreme happiness. They separate for a time when James goes to Prague with his generous and devoted friend Eric de Vaurigard, but Ellas needy nature requires proof of Jamess love, and his actions lead to betrayal and death. Mason is remarkably assured for a young writer, but he has not aimed his sights very high. This is essentially a romantic novel in the Du Maurier tradition, reproducing the portentous, elegiac tone and slowly revealed secrets of this seductive genre. Though Mason supplies clever plot twists, the suspense element is clothed in psychological trendiness: the source of Jamess dilemma is the plot device of too much fiction of late. And though Jamess ruminations on the emotional repression of the British privileged classes alert the reader to his crucial lack of maturity, his incessantly repeated claims of navet and innocence wear thin. Yet there is a large audience for a suspenseful, romantic story like this one, especially when it is told in literate and polished prose. Moreover, the photogenic Mason (and his Oxford accent) should make quite a hit on the talk shows. Major ad/promo; rights sold in Germany, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, France, Holland, Israel, Finland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Norway and Japan; Literary Guild alternate; Time Warner audio; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Last year, the British press went wild over Mason, an attractive, 19-year-old Oxford student who sold this first novel in a two-book deal for a record-breaking sum. Seventy-year-old James Farrell confesses on page one to having just killed his wife of 45 years. Farrell then recounts the events of his youth (in the late 1990s) that led to his act of cold justice. A promising violinist, James meets Ella Harcourt, a wealthy young woman already engaged. Their resulting affair encompasses betrayal, guilt, madness, revenge, and death. Its a classic tale, with Farrell carried blindly along on waves of passion (water imagery abounds) as the plot unfolds. While the novel seems a bit self-conscious at times, it is also refreshingly old-fashioned in its almost total lack of sexual detail. This and the Cornish setting may account for Masons being compared to Daphne du Maurier. Publicity alone will demand purchase by public libraries.
-Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
well done for a young man,
By
This review is from: Drowning People (Mass Market Paperback)
I am 3/4 of the way through this book and enjoying it. Sure it has some faults but who writes a perfect book that pleases everyone? The thing that impresses me is that he began the book at 18, so critics..calm down and give him a chance to mature and improve. All writers have to be beginners at some point and I am sure given a chance he will get better as his life experiences increase.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Laughable,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Drowning People (Mass Market Paperback)
In essence, there are three problems with this book. Firstly, it is grossly overwritten given that it is rather banal. It's a 150-page novella blown up to two or three times that length by the narrator's tedious musings on life, love, youth, and coincidence. Little of this advances the plot and none of it is very interesting, so it is difficult not to suspect that it was inserted as padding to meet the word-count target. Secondly, the plot turns entirely on preposterous coincidences and absurdly improbable behaviour. At times it is unintentionally hilarious. For instance, the hero meets the heroine after she accosts him out running in a public park, the way women do, and broaches the subject of his socks. This triggers - you guessed it - a rumination by the narrator on the sublimity of love versus the ordinariness of socks. Jeffrey Archer would have been proud of it, but frankly I actually wondered if it had been added in for laughs. The narrator subsequently runs into the heroine's sister (in yet another park), deduces who she is, and introduces himself. She then relates her entire life history to him, the way women do to total strangers. I fell off the sofa laughing when, at one point, the hero samples homsoexuality with his best mate to prove to the heroine that he loves her. Must remember to try that one myself. Third, there is a peculiar sense of temporal dislocation. Although the "action" is supposed to be set in the 1990s it actually all feels self-consciously Edwardian.The narrator attends cocktail parties - you know, the way 19-year-olds do - and keeps running into the same cast of two-dimensional characters, who all know each other, so that one is left with the impression that London is a city of about 200 people. Needless to say they're all sparklingly interesting - we know this because the writer tells us so. The scenes set in 2040 feature the lord of the manor addressing his forehead-knuckling tenants, as though it's 1740. I have no doubt this is intentional, but what end it is supposed to accomplish is a mystery. In about 5 or 6 years the writer will be very embarrassed about this, and it is hoped that he hasn't spent all the money by then, because he isn't going to make much more unless he improves pretty sharpish. Poor.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loverly read,
This review is from: The Drowning People (Mass Market Paperback)
... I only wish I could write half as well as that at my advanced age of 60#. Yes, Ella had problems and was most likely as crazy as her family history made her out to be. James admits he was naieve or however you spell that word. Sarah was just as crazy as her cousin but got away with her crime for almost 50 years. ... I look forward to more from Mr. Mason. .
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