- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Candlewick; Reprint edition (May 11 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0763648264
- ISBN-13: 978-0763648268
- Product Dimensions: 13.5 x 2.5 x 20.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #241,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Quill & Quire
The young people in Tim Wynne-Jones’s new novel are talented, smart twentysomethings, some with more support and privilege – and better teeth – than others. Beautiful Mimi appears to have it all: looks, laptop, a great life in New York City. But she has also made some mistakes, particularly with the prof in her first-year course who has turned stalker. Planning to decompress and maybe write a screenplay about the experience, she arrives at the Ottawa Valley cabin owned by her artist father, only to find the place inhabited. The musician in the bedroom turns out to be a half-brother whose existence her father neglected to mention. And there are other, more threatening presences – more unfinished business from Dad’s “Canada” period. Most teens, if they read at all, tend to read genre fiction: fantasy, chick-lit, sexy vampire books. The Uninvited is none of these: it is instead the kind of engaging, evocative, nuanced book that has won Wynne-Jones numerous awards. But its dead-on, quirky dialogue and big messy issues should attract a wide readership from Grade 9 up. The story is genuinely scary, as Wynne-Jones evokes both the beauty and the potential violence of country life. Poor Mimi has fled from a stalker she knows to one she can’t even see, and it’s hard to tell if Cramer, a very attractive tech-support guy who also happens to be a neighbour, is a villain or merely a good guy in bad trouble. The most dangerous character of all doesn’t show her true colours until the end. With its dark legacies, intriguing relationships, hidden chambers, forbidden love, and flowing blood, The Uninvited has all the appeal of a sexy vampire, sans the fangs.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
"More suspenseful family drama than haunted-house tale. . . . The climax is heart-pounding, and the beautifully evoked bucolic setting plays a starring role." — KIRKUS REVIEWS
Mimi Shapiro had a disturbing freshman year at NYU, thanks to a foolish affair with a professor who still haunts her caller ID. So when her artist father, Marc, offers the use of his remote Canadian cottage, she’s glad to hop in her Mini Cooper and drive up north. The house is fairy-tale quaint, and the key is hidden right where her dad said it would be, so she’s shocked to fi nd someone already living there — Jay, a young musician, who is equally startled to meet Mimi and immediately accuses her of leaving strange and threatening tokens inside: a dead bird, a snakeskin, a cricket sound track embedded in his latest composition. But Mimi has just arrived, so who is responsible? And more alarmingly, what does the intruder want? Part gripping thriller, part family drama, this fast-paced novel plays out in alternating viewpoints, in a pastoral setting that is evocative and eerie — a mysterious character in its own right.
Mimi Shapiro had a disturbing freshman year at NYU, thanks to a foolish affair with a professor who still haunts her caller ID. So when her artist father, Marc, offers the use of his remote Canadian cottage, she’s glad to hop in her Mini Cooper and drive up north. The house is fairy-tale quaint, and the key is hidden right where her dad said it would be, so she’s shocked to fi nd someone already living there — Jay, a young musician, who is equally startled to meet Mimi and immediately accuses her of leaving strange and threatening tokens inside: a dead bird, a snakeskin, a cricket sound track embedded in his latest composition. But Mimi has just arrived, so who is responsible? And more alarmingly, what does the intruder want? Part gripping thriller, part family drama, this fast-paced novel plays out in alternating viewpoints, in a pastoral setting that is evocative and eerie — a mysterious character in its own right.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Great Cover. . .Little Else,
By
This review is from: The Uninvited (Hardcover)
I have to take great exception with Quill & Quire's recent review of The Uninvited. This novel is anything but fresh and unique. In fact, it is little more than contrived and formulaic. Tim Wynne-Jones has obviously spent a lot of time creating a protagonist whom he feels can appeal to girls everywhere. Unfortunately, he has created an annoying, self-righteous, ultra-suave, irritatingly "cool" Mimi Shapiro, with a vocabulary and presence that is twenty years beyond her scope. For someone who has recently run away from her university professor-lover, she is much too self-assured and secure in her superior aloofness to be be a nineteen year-old. The other characters fare little better. The adults are mere caricatures; the villains are comic-book derivatives, and the plot is riddled with holes large enough to ventilate the entire Ottawa Valley in which it is supposedly situated. Readers in need of a decent YA suspense novel would be much better served to pick up Gail Giles' Shattering Glass, John Green's Looking for Alaska or Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.Due to the fact that, surprisingly, The Uninvited has been nominated for this year's White Pine YA Fiction Award, our high school Book Club discussed the novel's merits this past week. Just let's say, the other nominees need not be too concerned about competition from this selection. This is mediocrity at its most banal!!
4.0 out of 5 stars
September contender,
By Chris (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Uninvited (Hardcover)
With a cottage trip coming up, I wanted to read a book featuring a cottage and, luckily, I rediscovered "The Uninvited". It was a surprising, unpredictable read that you can't really conform to a genre. I can say it was one of my favourite reads of the year with a thrilling climax that had me going back through the book, re-reading nonsensical stuff that made sense, after all. The book's only negative: I'm not sure I really believed the very end of the book (the actions and emotions of the main characters). But, who knows? I might act that way in their shoes.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too,
By TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Uninvited (Hardcover)
When New Yorker Mimi drives all the way up into the Canadian wilderness to find the little house her artist father once used as a studio, she's just looking to spend some time alone - and away from an affair with a professor that has taken a nasty turn.The last thing she expects is to find someone already occupying the house. Jay, a young musician struggling to find his muse, is more connected to Mimi than she first realizes. And so is the shy young man who watches them in secret from the river. As Mimi and Jay divide up the house, the idyllic setting in the countryside is disrupted by a series of intrusions that become more and more destructive and apparently hostile. Why would anyone want to disturb them? How can they be stopped? And just how many secrets lie hidden in that long-abandoned house? THE UNINVITED is a tense mystery broken by occasional bits of peace and beauty. The three narrators become more and more sympathetic as the reader gets to know them, and all of the supporting characters are well-developed and full of personality as well. Some of the best scenes are when Mimi, Jay, and Jay's girlfriend, Iris, are just hanging out, getting to know one another. But the gripping, suspenseful scenes are equally well done. Wynne-Jones does a masterful job of letting certain moments stand as they are, without pushing them into melodrama, like the subtly creepy chapter end when Mimi discovers someone's filmed her on her own camera.Readers will enjoy fitting the pieces together as they learn about each of the characters, but the most important questions will keep them eagerly turning pages right until the end. They may find it a little confusing that Jay's narrative is nearly completely dropped part of the way through the book, and the brief sections in italics don't seem to completely integrate into the story, but those are minor quibbles. Highly recommended to all fans of mystery and suspense. Reviewed by: Lynn Crow
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