Paperback, 528 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2010 by Penguin Publishing Group.
One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.
I kept expecting this book to take off into an intense story, and it just didn't. Not to mention I found the ending incredibly depressing.
It's been widely described as a ghost story but personally I feel this is a bit of a spoiler and maybe a little bit inaccurate. I would have loved to have read this without that knowledge so I could make up my own mind as to what is going on. However I did like how the house becomes a character in itself whether or not you believe this is a ghost story. Really well written and a great account of the fall of the country estates that was so common after the war.
