Tag Archives: Eve Chase

#BookReview ‘The Birdcage’ by Eve Chase #mystery

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Three half-sisters, an artist father, a crumbling house on a cliff in Cornwall and a mystery event in their past which no-one discusses. The Birdcage by Eve Chase is about fractured families, the unity and division of a shared secret and the need to acknowledge the past in order to face the future. Eve ChaseTold in two timelines – 2019 and 1999 – the story unfolds slowly and takes a while to settle down. The story of the mystery is a long time coming. Three half-sisters – Lauren, Flora, Kat – are summoned to their father’s summer home in Cornwall. Artist Charlie Finch has a chequered history with women, demonstrated by assorted female nude sketches his daughters find in his studio. Charlie is cagey about the reason for summoning them to Rock Point; is he ill, dying, retiring, moving house? As well as trying to work out what’s going on with their father, the three sisters must also unravel their own demons. Lauren is mourning the death of her mother Dixie. Flora, accompanied by two-year old son Raff, struggles beneath the suffocating control of her husband. Kat’s relationship has broken up and her business is in trouble. Add in Charlie’s art studio assistant Angie, former cleaning lady Viv and a mysterious stranger who walks a black dog on the nearby cliffs, and there’s a lot going on.
Everything hangs on an incident twenty years earlier. In 1999, the three teenage sisters are gathered at their grandparents’ house Rock Point for summer with their father who is painting in his studio. The sisters live with their mothers and see each other rarely. It is the summer of the total eclipse of the sun on August 11, a true event. Chase makes much of the strange atmosphere that day, something in the air, the sense that something was going to happen. The story takes a while to get to the secret which is at the root of the constant sibling sniping and jealousy, but this is a journey the sisters personally must travel in order to understand how it made them into the complex adults of 2019.
By the end of the book I still wasn’t one hundred per cent clear which mother belonged to which daughter. The timeline jumps around and many peripheral characters are mentioned lightly and either never or infrequently appear at Rock Point. The final section, after the big reveal, takes a long time to wrap up. Curiously, the Cornish location is incidental. Rock Point, which could be situated on an isolated cliff anywhere, is the strong point. With its idiosyncratic furnishings, aviary of birds, creaks and rumbles, what secrets does this house have to tell?
An atmospheric read – weather plays a big part plus anonymous notes, a dark stranger, talking parrot and slashed car tyre – and the 1999 eclipse at its heart.

Click the title below to read my reviews of two other novels by Eve Chase:-
THE GLASS HOUSE
THE VANISHING OF AUDREY WILDE

If you like this, try:-
‘Birdcage Walk’ by Helen Dunmore
‘My Husband the Stranger’ by Rebecca Done
‘Whistle in the Dark’ by Emma Healey

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#BookReview ‘The Glass House’ by Eve Chase #historical #mystery

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This story takes place in a forest and I could smell the humus rich soil, see the ferns, hear the rustlings of small mammals and imagine the blending of shadows and sunlight. In The Glass House by Eve Chase, the mysterious happenings in a forest have ramifications across the decades. Shame, deceit, secrets and love are bound-up together in a group of people whose lives are coloured forever by what happened in the Forest of Dean in 1971. Eve ChaseWhen nanny Big Rita drives her boss’s wife, Jeannie Harrington and Jeannie’s two children Hera and Freddy to their country house in the West of England, they enter a different world. Leaving behind Jeannie’s husband Walter at their sugar-white stucco house in Primrose Hill, and her own unhappy memories, Rita is cautious about the mysterious forest with its rustling noises and the feeling of being watched. She spends every hour with the children while Jeannie, recovering after the loss of a baby, spends her time in bed. And then Hera finds a baby girl abandoned in the woods. This is the catalyst for a number of things happening at once, things that upset the status quo and challenge Rita’s place in the Harrington family and what she wants for her own life. Most disturbing to her equilibrium is local woodsman Robbie Rigby.
The second timeline is set now and is told by Sylvie who has just left her husband and moved into a flat beside a canal in Kensal Town. Sylvie is taking time to find her feet away from husband Steve and teenage daughter Annie who is staying with her grandmother beside the sea in Devon. But two incidents quickly challenge Sylvie’s perceptions about what actually matters to her.
And there is a delicious hint in the short Prologue – a report in a Gloucestershire newspaper in 1971 about a body found in the forest near Foxcote Manor.
I found the structure slightly messy with varying pace which at times was rather slow. I was longing for some connections to be made so the story could move on. Looking back at my review of Chase’s The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde, I made a similar comment. The last scenes seemed to tie up loose ends rather too quickly and neatly in comparison with the earlier speed of the story, but that’s just my personal preference. Eve Chase writes a great sense of place; Foxcote Manor seems a real house set in a real forest.
As Robbie explains to Rita, ‘when a giant tree crashes down in a forest, light and air rush into the cleared space, dormant seeds flower, and new life scrambles up, taking its chance.’ That’s basically what happens to the people in The Glass House.
Incidentally, the glass house mentioned in the title, and featured on the lovely cover, refers to a terrarium. Rita owns one in 1971 and her care of the plants living in it – she gives them names – mirrors her care of the two children, but also symbolises the fragility and transparency of the lives of the Harrington family at Foxcote Manor.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Eve Chase:-
THE BIRDCAGE
THE VANISHING OF AUDREY WILDE

If you like this, try:-
‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land
‘The Doll Funeral’ by Kate Hamer
‘The Invitation’ by Lucy Foley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GLASS HOUSE by Eve Chase https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4KW via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde’ by Eve Chase #mystery

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A tale of sisters, secrets and the teenage years of confusion and temptations on the brink of adulthood. The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde by Eve Chase is about two groups of sisters, unrelated, who live decades apart in the Cotswold house of Applecote Manor. Overhanging everything is the mysterious disappearance of a twelve-year-old girl, Audrey Wilde, from the same house in the Fifties. Eve ChaseJessie and Will move to Applecote Manor, a rundown doer-upper, with their toddler Romy and Will’s teenage daughter Bella. Jessie is seeking a country life, Will hopes to step back from his logistics business. Almost as soon as they arrive, things change. Will’s business partner leaves and causes the sale of the company so, while he negotiates this, Jessie is left in the run-down house with the two girls. Romy fearlessly explores the potentially dangerous land, including river, pool, woods and well. Bella sullenly resents Jessie for not being her own mother, who was killed in a road accident. And then they learn about the disappearance of Audrey Wilde.
Is there something intrinsically wrong with the house and the land surrounding it? Why are the neighbours shunning Jessie and her two daughters? Who is the woman with the two black dogs who often stops and stares at the house? Why don’t local labourers want to work there? There are lots of things going on in this book, almost too many.
The second story strand focuses on four cousins of Audrey who, years after her disappearance, spend the summer of 1959 at Applecote Manor with their still grieving aunt and uncle. The girls, who are knitted together as a tight unit when they arrive, are teased apart by the arrival of two local boys, Harry and Tom. As the flirting and laden glances become more meaningful, the story darkens and some of the truth is revealed.
I enjoyed this book despite the occasionally dense plotting. There are many twists and turns, some of which could have been stripped out to give air to the central mystery. I particularly enjoyed the 1959 section and the inter-action of the four sisters, shadowed at every step by their memories of Audrey. The message: if you don’t face up to tragedy when it happens, it can reverberate through the years and never dies.

Click the title below to read my reviews of two other novels by Eve Chase:-
THE BIRDCAGE
THE GLASS HOUSE

If you like this, try:-
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn
‘Shelter’ by Sarah Franklin
‘The Distant Hours’ by Kate Morton

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE VANISHING OF AUDREY WILDE by Eve Chase http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2T9 via @SandraDanby