Book
More than you know : a novel
Record details
- ISBN: 9780688174033 (acid-free paper)
- ISBN: 0688174035 (acid-free paper)
-
Physical Description:
print
269 p. ; 22 cm. : ill. - Edition: 1st ed.
- Publisher: New York : W. Morrow, c2000.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Reminiscing in old age -- Fiction Women -- Maine -- Fiction Older women -- Fiction Haunted houses -- United States -- Fiction Paranormal fiction First loves -- Fiction Maine -- Fiction |
| Genre: | Psychological fiction. Love stories. Ghost stories, American. |
| Topic Heading: | Ghost stories. Love stories. |
Available copies
- 3 of 3 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Prince Rupert Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 3 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prince Rupert Library | GUTC (Text) | 33294001102565 | Adult Fiction - Second Floor | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #2 February 2000
When eldery Hannah returns to her town, Dundee, on the coast of Maine to tell her story, she remembers the incandescent glory of young love. Interleaved with her story is a nineteenth-century one, of Claris Osgood, her husband, Danial (with an a), and her daughter, Sallie. Hannah, edgy in her adolescence and trapped with her stepmother, meets Conary Crocker, a boy who shares with her a love for the land and the water and who, like her, has caught glimpses of things best unseen. In the older tale, Claris marries Danial and finds his silence first enticing and then bitter. When her son dies after a fight with his father, Claris becomes hardened in that bitter silence, and Sallie realizes her mother will never have heart's room for her. The viciousness that entwines Claris, Danial, and Sallie reaches past their deaths to strangle Hannah and Conary's joy. Gutcheon expertly manages both joy and horror; her touches of the supernatural seem rooted naturally in their Maine location like ancient trees. Unputdownable. ((Reviewed February 15, 2000)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2000 February #2
From a usually deft storyteller (Five Fortunes, 1998, etc.), an uncompelling ghost tale, set in Maine and spanning two centuries, that fails to either beguile or bewitch. The narrator, Hannah Gray, is getting old and wants to tell what happened before it's too late, so back in Dundee, Maine, where she spent summers, she begins her account of a malevolent spirit and thwarted love. It's winter in the small seaside village the perfect time to describe a restless ghost bent on harming those with joyful lives. The story Hannah relates, of her encounter with the ghost, parallels the story of Claris Osgood, born in 1838 and destined for tragedy. Hannah explains how her mother, a Dundee native, died when Hannah was a baby and her father married Edith, a dejected, insecure woman. The summer Hannah was 17, the family rented the old schoolhouse in Dundee, but Hannah soon realized there was something strange about the house. She heard weeping and doors being opened, and then saw a woman in her bedroom. Curious and determined to disprove a skeptical Edith, Hannah learned the house was moved from nearby Beal Island, where a notorious murder took place in1886. In the other story, Claris grows up, marries loner Daniel Haskell, and moves to his home on Beal Island. Missing her family, Claris is consoled by her son, Amos. Later daughter Sallie is born, yet she will never be loved as much, and when Amos drowns, Claris begins behaving strangely. Next, Daniel is murdered, and Sallie is accused of the crime but acquitted. Hannah continues with her own yarn, recalling how she met and fell forever in love with Conary Crocker, a fisherman's son, and how the embittered ghost deliberately destroyed her happiness. Schematic plot, unconvincing characters: both undo what a potentially haunting love story. Copyright 2000 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2000 January #1
As an old woman, Hannah Gray looks deep into her past at the great and tragic love of her life with the wild and handsome Conary Crocker. Drawn together by a frightening apparition from the previous century and by their mutually miserable family lives, the young lovers make an urgent bid to outrun fate and solve a murder from their own ancestral gene pools. In 1886 someone planted an ax in the head of Daniel Haskell, kin to Conary. The likeliest suspects were his wife Claris or his daughter Sallie--both relatives of Hannah. Gutcheon traces the wrenching unraveling of Claris and Daniel's love, done in by the cruel and twisted ways of a marriage run dreadfully amok. Gutcheon, author of five previous novels (including Domestic Pleasure and Five Fortunes), uses her incandescent storytelling gifts to ignite the parallel tales of Hannah and Conary's and Claris and Daniel's love--ruined beyond repair by circumstance, hatred, and a desperate angry ghost. It is the rare writer indeed who can end every single chapter with deliciously suspenseful foreboding. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/99.]--Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1999 December #1
The aging Hannah recalls the ghost she once saw, the wild boy who loved her, and a long-ago marriage whose tragic consequences still reverberate. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2000 February #1
It's a rare author who can combine a humdinger of a ghost tale with a haunting story of young love, and do so with literary grace and finesse. Gutcheon does just that and she acquits herself beautifully in this poignant novel. What's more, she adroitly manages alternating narratives, set a century apart, raising the level of suspense as the characters in each period approach the cusp on which a life turns, in parallel events that will irrevocably define the future for all of them. The novel is essentially two stories of doomed love and its consequences for future generations. Narrator Hannah Gray is an elderly widow when she relates the circumstances of the summer when she fell in love with Conary Crocker, a charming young man from a poor family in Dundee on the coast of Maine. Brought to Dundee from Boston during the Depression by her abusive stepmother, Hannah learns about the fate of distant ancestral relatives of hers and Conary's, who lived on now-deserted Beal Island in the mid 1800s. The reader learns the horrifying details in the same small increments that Hannah does, via the alternating point of view of Claris Osgood, who in 1858 defies her parents and marries taciturn Danial Haskell, moving with him to the island where, too late, she discovers her new husband's narrow-minded religious fundamentalism and corrosively mean personality. The union, which produces two children, becomes increasingly rancorous and will end in murder. Meanwhile, in her own time, Hannah is terrified by the appearances of a wildly sobbing ghost with "gruesome burning eyes," who exudes almost palpable hatred. Tantalizing clues about the identity of the macabre specter, and the eventual tragedy it causes, hum through the narrative like a racing pulse. Gutcheon adds depth and texture through lovely descriptions of the Maine coast and the authentic vernacular of its residents, whom she depicts with real knowledge of life in a seacoast community. Her sophisticated prose and narrative skill mark this novel, her sixth (after Five Fortunes), as a breakthrough to a wide readership. Agent, Wendy Weil. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club featured alternate; 6-city author tour. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. - School Library Journal Reviews : SLJ Reviews 2000 August
YA-Elderly Hannah Gray narrates this enthralling tale of events that occurred in her 17th summer when she accompanied her grim stepmother to a small village on the Maine coast. Their rented cottage was a converted schoolhouse that had been brought to the mainland from a nearby island. Hannah sees visions of a tormented, ghostlike figure in the house and she hears mysterious sounds emanating from the upper-floor rooms. She learns that a young woman was accused, tried, and acquitted of killing her father there 75 years earlier. Alternating chapters tell the sad story of Claris Osgood, the lonely daughter of a happy, talented, and prosperous family in the village in the 1800s. In search of independence, she insists on marrying a quiet, brooding man, and they move out to the island. Misfortune strikes Claris's family as they struggle in silent combat among themselves. While Hannah is trying to avoid spending time with her dour, disapproving stepmother, she roams the village and becomes friendly with a young man whose family has deep roots in the area. They visit the now-uninhabited island where they come face to face with the past. Teens will enjoy these parallel stories of love between people from different backgrounds and be saddened by the dual tragedies that strike them. Suspense keeps the plot moving at a rapid clip.-Penny Stevens, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
