THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET (Harper Perennial, 2008) by Margot Livesey
I read this book for the 2nd time this past week. It is the sort of novel – the kind we love – that draws you seductively over and over to its pages. It’s a character-driven page-turner.
Set in England and Scotland, it takes you there; for me, that was an additional pleasure in reading it; my two summers in Oxford have left me with a crush on the region.
What really kept me reading cannot easily be parsed, and I think that is a sign of how complex the characters are, how intertwined are plot and thematic concerns. When we recommend novels to friends, it’s not unusual to hear: “What’s it about?” THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET is about secrets we keep, and the focus – the keen light of Livesey’s eye – is on the secrets we keep to protect ourselves, and the damage that accrues from those decisions not to tell.
Sean (a scholar and writer) and Abigail (an actress and producer) live together, with Abigail’s longtime friend Dara (a women’s counselor) in the flat beneath them. The story is unveiled through four points-of-view, Sean, Abigail, Dara, and Cameron, Dara’s father, who has a subtle, delicately described, thing for young girls. Many times I thought that the story seeks to unearth the ways our erotic impulses may both feed us and destroy us.
You will fall deeply into the story. Livesey’s wicked smart prose and the knitting up of the plot will keep you there. When you come away from it, it will stay with you. Lovers of English literature will savor the way the work of Keats and Dickens and Charlotte Bronte are imprinted on the hearts and minds of the characters and influence their perceptions. I hope that you will ask your library to order a copy, if they haven’t already, and that you will buy one for yourself and a couple to give away. It’s out in paperback, and the paperback contains supplemental material I enjoyed: a biography and an essay by Livesey.
--PATRICIA HENLEY