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A Kirkus Best Book of 2018
"Unlike anything I've read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful."--Tessa Hadley
The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement--a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion.
It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders--migrants fleeing the plague--find no mercy.
Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood's walls.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history--and by one patch of peculiar ground.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Author of an acclaimed biography of the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, Hughes-Hallet offers an enjoyable, sprawling epic debut about an enclosed paradise. Populated by a large cast, its subject is singular: Wynchwood, a lavish English country estate that weathers centuries of upheavals, from civil war to its transformation into a theme park for the aristocrat-obsessed. The novel concentrates on two historical eras. The 17th-century scenes, which bookend the novel, focus on John Norris, a prim landscape architect with extravagant Eden-like visions for the estate. Magnificent though his designs may be, the outside world creeps in, notably in the form of tragic accidents and the plague that ravaged England in 1665. These sections, which include flourishes of historical and cultural detail (witchcraft, folklore, secret religious sects), paint a vivid picture. The novel's middle episodes, which check in on the fast-living set congregating at Wynchwood during key moments throughout the Cold War, are the highlight: consistently witty, they are reminiscent of another country house saga, Alain Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child. Hughes-Hallett effectively expands the domestic drama to touch on class resentment, religious conflict, and international affairs. Her Wynchwood is a remarkable, ambivalent creation, "at once a sanctuary and place of internment," and readers will delight at strolling its grounds under her guidance. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
An Oxfordshire estate is the focus of this extraordinary study of social upheaval down the years Lucy Hughes-Hallett, a cultural historian best known for The Pike, her award-winning biography of Italian poet and proto-fascist Gabriele D'Annunzio, has now written an extraordinarily accomplished first novel. It opens in 1663, as landscape designer John Norris paces the boundaries of an ancient Oxfordshire estate, Wychwood, where he is charged with the establishment of a great park. In the nervous extended aftermath of the civil war, allegiances are still dissolving and re-forming. Norris's master Lord Woldingham is returning from exile, while his sister, chatelaine of Wychwood under Cromwell, has been relegated to the estate's borders along with her daughter Cecily. Not for nothing is it called Wychwood: spies, witches and religious dissenters conceal themselves in the woods Norris must civilise. Enclosure is, whether Norris likes it or not, a political act: and the designer's commission is further complicated when he falls in love with odd, elusive Cecily. With the work under way, an atmosphere of unease and fear builds, and when Woldingham's infant son and heir is drowned in a freak accident, a new level of instability is introduced. But before the threat can become concrete, we are shifted forwards 300 years, to the walled Wychwood of the early 1960s and another pivotal moment of social upheaval and enclosure: the erection of the Berlin Wall. An aristocratic couple, Christopher and Lil Rossiter, now hold court amid the avenues and fountains. The estate has been theirs for a bare two generations, but among their gardeners and housekeepers are the descendants of the Woldinghams' servants, and their dogs too, bearing the same names as their predecessors. Like the Woldinghams, behind closed doors the Rossiters are mourning a drowned son. They conduct their privileged lives, feigning languor among the peacocks and pools. But beneath the flirting and gossiping and drinking there are echoes of another war from which the Rossiters, their employees and their houseguests -- an elegant, reticent art dealer; an entrepreneur and his wife; nieces, nephews and assorted hangers-on -- have only recently emerged. There are among them those who knew postwar Berlin rather as Harry Lime knew Vienna, and who have an interest in the fallout from the Wall's erection. But once again, before the threat of exposure (emotional, political, sexual) can be carried out, Hughes-Hallett propels us forwards, this time on to 1989, and the Wall's demolition. Wychwood's population has shifted, loosened and reassembled itself over the intervening decades of free love and social mobility: they are older, but not necessarily wiser nor any more open about their desires and intentions. A planned rock concert in the grounds seems precarious and ill conceived, because with the demolition of walls the world is by no means a safer place: a fatwa has been issued, and an Indian publisher caught in the crossfire has sought sanctuary in one of Wychwood's outbuildings. Aids has drawn terrifyingly near, and real, hurricane-sized storm clouds bear down on the great trees and ancient buildings. It is only as Wychwood's bricks and mortar come under physical threat that we are returned to John Norris and the 17th century, to understand how the story of the great estate's construction ended. This is a big novel in all sorts of ways: it is long, rich and complicated. It is also absolutely involving This is a big novel in all sorts of ways: it is long, rich, dense, capacious and complicated; it has timeshifts and doubling-back and a sprawling cast. It is also absolutely involving, thanks to beautiful description and a very fine understanding of human emotion, from Antony the art dealer's lifetime of closeted anguish, to the grief at the loss of a child, to the poignancy of golden lives dwindled to disappointment. There are fools and witches and changeling children, eavesdroppers, arrases and mazes, and there is something almost Tolstoyan in its sly wit and descriptive brilliance, whether observing a waddling pug "so inbred it was close to madness", a carp's "reticulated flanks" sinister under dark water, the clatter and whir of a pheasant taking flight or "the scent of dung and watermint" after a catastrophic flood. Peculiar Ground may be big but it is also marvellously subtle: like its images, its preoccupations -- with class, and loyalty, and morality, and long marriage and the nature of love -- are not thrust at us at the expense of character, but allowed to develop in a way that feels both organic and magical. Its central image, of a society enclosed by a wall that is as dangerous as it is protective, could not be more pertinent to our world of hardening borders, and yet it resists easy interpretation; it is also to do with beauty, and family, and what we call home. It is indeed a mark of this intelligence and delicacy of touch that, although the novel must have been conceived of long before any referendum reared its ugly head, its message feels most like a lament for our country's fine strain of tolerant, eccentric inclusiveness that was buried under the thundering catastrophe of Brexit's crass populism. Humane, thoughtful, compelling and packed with magic, this is a remarkable achievement. Christobel Kent's latest novel is The Day She Disappeared (Sphere). - Christobel Kent.
Kirkus Review
An award-winning historian (Gabriele D'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War, 2013, etc.) makes her fiction debut with a story vast in scope but intimate in its details.The year is 1663. England's civil war has ended. Newly returned from exile, royalist Arthur Fortescue, the Earl of Woldingham, has hired the landscaper John Norris to turn his ancestral home into a private paradise. As he is drawn ever deeper into the life of Wychwood, Norris discovers that the Earl's plan to enclose his new gardens, fountains, and tree-lined avenues within a wall will be a disaster for the religious dissenters who live and worship in the forest around the estate. The Earl's land, Norris learns, is crisscrossed with secret paths used by people scorned and abused for their faith. When Hughes-Hallett brings the narrative 300 years into the future without first resolving this issue, the shift feels abrupt. But it soon becomes clear that the temporal leap makes perfect sense: the issue of the wall is unresolved because it is irresolvable. Who owns the land, who has right of way, what the very wealthy owe everyone else: these are questions that never go away. Hughes-Hallett explores how the past persists in othermore personalways as well. Relationships between masters and servants recapitulate themselves across generations. Family tragedies repeat with slight variations. Wychwood remains a world unto itself even as people come and go and the property changes hands. Time feels like a circle, and the novel brings us to 1989 before taking us back to the 17th century. There are multiple narrators and perspectives here, but the text never feels cacophonous because each voice is so exquisitely limned. Hughes-Hallett's choice to turn minor players into major characters is especially satisfying; of course those who rely upon the wealthy and powerful must be canny observers of the wealthy and powerful. The novel is a pleasure to read for the loveliness of its language. It's also a timely meditation on walls, on what they keep in and what they keep out.A first novel stunning for both its historical sweep and its elegant prose. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Hughes-Hallett's ambitious novel begins in 1663. The British monarchy has been restored after years of civil war. Norris, a landscape designer, arrives at Wychwood to refashion the gardens and oversee the construction of a wall that will completely enclose the grounds. Much of Norris' design still stands 300 years later, when Wychwood is a sanctuary (or, as one character puts it, a sanctuary and a place of internment) for a new generation, the generally upper-class Wychwood stalwarts, whose lives Hughes-Hallett traces from 1961 to 1989. Also on hand are characters descended from the estate workers of Norris' time, in tune with the past and Wychwood's attendant legends. Witchcraft, ancient Roman mosaics, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, and the stirrings of Islamic fundamentalism all come into play amid themes of continuity and change and the author's frequent use of water as a symbol. The novel's final section returns the reader to 1665, when Wychwood is seen as a refuge against the plague. Give this to readers who enjoy the works of A. S. Byatt.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ASYMMETRY, by Lisa Halliday. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) This stunning debut comprises two novella-like sections, one about a young editor's affair with an older author and the other about an Iraqi-American economist detained at Heathrow. The result is transgressive, shrewd and politically engaged. HOW TO STOP TIME, by Matt Haig. (Viking, $26.) Tom Hazard, the protagonist of Haig's new novel, is old - old "in the way that a tree, or a quahog clam, or a Renaissance painting is old," he tells us. He has a condition that causes him to age more slowly than others, but on the cusp of his 440 th birthday he appears to be suffering a midlife crisis. THE UKRAINIAN NIGHT: An Intimate History of Revolution, by Marci Shore. (Yale, $26.) Shore draws evocative portraits of the Ukrainian demonstrators who braved beatings and even death in 2013 to protest the government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Still, the revolution they sparked remains unfinished. THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, by Bart D. Ehrman. (Simon & Schuster, $28.) A best-selling scholar of the Bible explores how a small group of despised believers made their faith the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, thereby overthrowing an entire culture. DIRECTORATE S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Steve Coll. (Penguin, $35.) Coil's is a dispiriting tale of a 16-year war that has cost a trillion dollars and more than 2,400 American lives to little end. "The United States and its allies went barreling into Afghanistan," Coll writes, "because they felt that they had no alternative." DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA, by Walter Mosley. (Mulholland/ Little, Brown, $27.) A new private eye, an ex-cop named Joe King Oliver, makes his debut in this atmospheric crime novel, set in New York and featuring, as always with Mosley, an array of distinctive characters. PECULIAR GROUND, by Lucy Hughes-Hallett. (Harper/ HarperCollins, $28.99.) Agreat house in the English countryside, seen in both the 1600s and the mid-20th century, is the venue for a historical novel that uses walls, both actual and metaphorical, as its presiding metaphor. THE MAZE AT WINDERMERE, by Gregory Blake Smith. (Viking, $27.) Set in Newport, R.I., this novel intersects five stories from different eras, from the 17th century to the present day. Among the more notable characters is the young Henry James. BABY MONKEY, PRIVATE EYE, by Brian Selznickand David Serlin. Illustrated by Brian Selznick. (Scholastic, $16.99, ages 4 to 8.) Selznick's lavish pencil drawings enhance this early reader book about a detective who happens to be an adorable monkey. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Library Journal Review
DEBUT The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with a thoroughly engaging novel about people in two different ages but in one place. The times are 1663-65 and 1961-89, both periods of wrenching change. In 1663, good King Charles II is newly restored to his throne; the Puritans are ousted. In 1961, Puritan attitudes are taking it on the chin; even monogamy suffers. By 1989, another generation has taken over, homosexuality is no longer taboo, and the Berlin Wall falls. Dozens of people populate these pages, shaping the narrative, but there is another player. The great manor of Wychwood and its landmarks play key roles throughout. Family names persist across three centuries among the estate's servitors and tenants. The many stories in this wonderful book are all variations on the theme of change and of the holding power of place over transient circumstance. Hughes-Hallett (Gabriele D'Anunzio) is a master storyteller. Her prose is a treasure-evocative, rich, engaging. VERDICT This book is already a hit overseas and will be here, too. History lovers, but even more, lovers of good fiction, will gobble it up. [See Prepub Alert, 7/31/17.]-David Keymer, Cleveland © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.