Review: The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman

Carol Goodman always has an unparalleled way of transforming a location in a book into a beautifully haunted atmosphere. Her descriptions jump from the page, and every time she sets her novel in a new location I know it’s going to be lush, gothic, decrepit, and wonderful.

Her location in The Ghost Orchid is no different. Set at the upstate New York sprawling aged and crumbling Bosco Estate, Goodman unites an intriguing cast of characters amid the ivy-covered statues and dry fountains. Novelist Ellis Brooks has hoped her acceptance into Bosco’s notorious writing program would allow her the freedom to pursue her novel in peace. But the past pursues her instead, and she soon finds that the residents of Bosco were not brought together by chance.

At times a romantic mystery, at times a suspenseful thriller, Goodman deftly weaves between an ages old missing child case, and the present day sleuthing Ellis is forced to undertake into the people and places around her. Always intriguing, I never want to finish a Goodman novel. Though the writing in this, her fourth novel, occasions into the trite and predictable, I was still engrossed by the scene set before me.

I had one issue with the end of the novel and a short side-tracked path that Goodman decided to briefly explore, but it was not the focus of the novel so I can set it aside as author-folly. Overall, I still love her novels and find them to be uniquely mysterious and haunting. I haven’t read many other authors that can successfully pull off a mystery while still making it literary. In this day of mass-market quick-publications, I delight in the fact that there are authors like Goodman who take suspense to another level.

4 stars

WWW for March 30, 2011

First, thanks to the venerable James Rollins who stopped by ye old Leaf to leave a comment and update us all that there are excerpts of his upcoming release, The Devil Colony (Sigma Book 6)!  I’ve been a fan of Rollins’ adventure novels for quite some time so it’s an honor to have him leave a note. The Devil Colony was originally scheduled for release last summer, but was pushed back to this June. Find the excerpts on his website here.

Second, it’s been SO long since I’ve done a WWW (hosted at Should Be Reading). I got a few goodies in the mail recently though so decided I would share.

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions:

What are you currently reading? 
I’m FINALLY reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larssen. I’m probably one of the last bookworms on the planet to pick up this series, but I just never had time for it until now. I’m definitely enjoying it so far!

What did you recently finish reading? 
The  Ghost Orchid by one of my faves, Carol Goodman. This was a bit weird for me in comparison to the other Goodman works that I’ve read. Full review should be up shortly so check back.

What do you think you’ll read next? 
I haven’t been able to take any ARCs lately due to the work for Rozlyn Press picking up, but when I received an email from Helen Phillips offering an advance look at her upcoming release And Yet They Were Happy, I was too intrigued to say no. here’s the synopsis from Helen’s website:

The surreal fables of And Yet They Were Happy chronicle the adventures large and small of a young couple setting out to build a life in an unstable world. It’s a world haunted by monsters, a world plagued by natural disasters, a world on the verge of collapse–but also a place of transformation, wonder, and delight, peopled by the likes of Noah, Eve, Bob Dylan, the Virgin Mary, Jack Kerouac, Anne Frank, and a cast of fairytale creatures. Hovering between reality and fantasy, autobiography and mythology, whimsy and darkness, And Yet They Were Happy is a journey through a universe at once peculiar and familiar.

In My Mailbox Monday: Alice Hoffman & Carol Goodman

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted by She Reads and Reads. Today is my first wedding anniversary! Like any good husband, mine got me a few different gifts, but most importantly, books! Here’s what I got…

Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman

The women of the Sparrow family have lived in New England for generations. Each one is born in the month of March and at the age of thirteen each develops an unusual gift. Elinor can smell a life. Her daughter, Jenny, can see other people’s dreams. Granddaughter Stella has just developed the ability to see how other people will die. Ironically, it is their gifts that have kept Elinor and Jenny apart for many years. But as Stella struggles to deal with her disturbing clairvoyance, the unthinkable happens: one of her premonitions lands her father in jail, wrongly accused of murder.

The ordeal leads Stella to her grandmother and to Cake House, the Sparrow’s ancestral home, filled with talismans and fraught with history. Now three generations of Sparrow women must come together to turn Stella’s potential to ruin into the potential to redeem.

The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman

Iris Greenfeder, ABD (All But Dissertation), feels the “buts” are taking over her life: all but published, all but a professor, all but married. Yet the sudden impulse to write a story about her mother, Katherine Morrissey, leads to a shot at literary success. The piece recounts an eerie Irish fairy tale her mother used to tell her at bedtime—and nestled inside it is the sad story of her death. It captures the attention of her mother’s former literary agent, who is convinced that Katherine wrote one final manuscript before her strange, untimely end in a fire thirty years ago. So Iris goes back to the remote Hotel Equinox in the Catskills, the place where she grew up, to write her mother’s biography and search for the missing manuscript—and there she unravels a haunting mystery, one that holds more secrets than she ever expected. . . .

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

Twenty years ago, Jane Hudson fled the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks after a terrible tragedy. The week before her graduation, in that sheltered wonderland, three lives were taken, all victims of suicide. Only Jane was left to carry the burden of a mystery that has stayed hidden in the depths of Heart Lake for more than two decades. Now Jane has returned to the school as a Latin teacher, recently separated and hoping to make a fresh start with her young daughter. But ominous messages from the past dredge up forgotten memories. And young, troubled girls are beginning to die again–as piece by piece the shattering truth slowly floats to the surface. . . .

Can’t WAIT to read these!

Review: The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman

The surface of the water is a silver mirror reflecting the silver window of the sky. It’s all silver light spreading as far as the eye can see, a mirror reflecting a window. What difference does it make which side I’m on?
The Drowning Tree – Carol Goodman

I’m not joking when I say Carol Goodman could be my idol. Granted, I’ve only read two of her books, but she’s exactly the kind of writer I hope to be some day. Her novels are full of artistic and literary themes, with beautifully dynamic settings. Who wouldn’t want to write such intriguingly mysterious books?

The Drowning Tree centers around Juno McKay as she’s forced to confront her past during a reunion at Penrose College. When her best friend, Christine Webb, is chosen to give a speech on a famous stained glass window about to be restored by Juno’s family, Juno knows she has to attend. But it turns out that Christine has done some behind-the-scenes research, and seems to have discovered a bit of history about the founders of Penrose College that the current President, Gavin Penrose, may not be so excited about. When Christine dies unexpectedly, Juno is left with nothing but Christine’s research and a handful of suspects. When links to Juno’s mentally disturbed ex-husband start to surface, she no longer knows who she can trust.

Goodman’s writing is smooth and Juno’s voice is incredibly informative and consistant. But more than the characters themselves, I love the environments Goodman creates. The Drowning Tree has a burned out skeleton of a mansion called Astolat, a prestigious women’s college with a shadowy history, and a haunting statue garden drowned under a river. I can’t imagine where she comes up with them, but her scenes are intensely dark and beautiful. Throughout the novel are themes of art and lust, as well as greco-roman mythology. The founders of the college were artists and their paintings of nymphs and mythological scenes are described so vividly and hauntingly, I can picture them if I shut my eyes.

As with Arcadia Falls (her most recent book), Goodman leaves you guessing until the end. You think you’ve solved the mystery and know who the killer is, but you’re wrong. Could it be Juno’s possible new love interest, the kayak instructor Kyle? Could it be the founding family’s grandson, current Penrose President, Gavin Penrose? Could her very own ex-husband Neil have done it? Fresh from his years in the local mental institution? Or did Christine succumb to her fear of depression and kill herself? The end happens quick, so fast you might miss it if you aren’t looking.

Goodman is two-for-two in my book. I strongly recommend her novels. 4 stars

(I purchased this book)

Teaser Tuesdays: The Drowning Tree, My Name is Memory

Well aren’t you just the lucky one? It’s another double-dose of the Teaser Tuesdays for you here at ye old Leaf (hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading).

This makes two weeks in a row, so don’t say I never gave you anything.

I finished The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman last night. Look for a review later today or tomorrow.

I stir the water in the pool with the tips of my fingers. The cold water stings the cuts on my hand but I also feel something knitting together, some tear deeper than the ones on my fingers beginning to heal. (286)

I started My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares this morning. So far, so good!

I say we and I mean myself, my soul, my selves, my many lives. I say we and I also mean the other ones like me who have the Memory, the conscious record of experience on this earth that survives every death. (1)

Let me know what great teasers you’ve got this week!

Friday Finds: The Ghost Orchid

Slowly but surely I’m working my way through the novels of Carol Goodman (Arcadia Falls, The Drowning Tree) and last weekend I picked up my Friday Finds (hosted by Should Be Reading) selection:

The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman. From B&N:

For more than one hundred years, creative souls have traveled to Upstate New York to work under the captivating spell of the Bosco estate. Cradled in silence, inspired by the rough beauty of overgrown gardens and crumbling statuary, these chosen few fashion masterworks–and have cemented Bosco’s reputation as a premier artists’ colony. This season, five talented artists-in-residence find themselves drawn to the history of Bosco, from the extensive network of fountains that were once its centerpiece but have long since run dry to the story of its enigmatic founder, Aurora Latham, and the series of tragic events that occurred more than a century ago.

I just love how Goodman creates such mystical, ruined places in her novels. The Drowning Tree has the skeleton of a burned out mansion with a sunken sculpture garden where grey statues float under a stream. Creepy, mysterious, dark, and suspenseful; I pretty much love her creations.

Teaser Tuesdays: Day For Night, The Drowning Tree

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly box o’ fun hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Joyous adventure for all. This week brings with it another double-dose of the teaserifics. I finished the deliciously fabulous Day For Night by Frederick Reiken last night (review should be up later today or tomorrow) and I started The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman this morning (I’m pretty sure this lady’s going to become my idol). So, feast your eyes on these tidbits my dears, and I’m sorry for breaking the rules on the first one!

“I know you’re smart and that you understand that certain things are mysterious. That even when people know certain things are possible, they prefer thinking that these things don’t really happen. I kind of doubt that you’ll ever see me again, so if it’s not entirely clear, I like you. You’re the only sane person in this family. If I were you, I’d get away.” Day For Night, Frederick Reiken (43)

“When I look back at my time here at Penrose it is as though I lived in a sealed tower, aloof from the world. Some might say we were too sheltered–that we dwelled in a world of shadows and that for many the strong sunlight of the real world was too much.” The Drowning Tree, Carol Goodman (16)

Review: Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

I lay my hand on the seared wood of the tree–a great jagged ziggurat that looked exactly like the rend that had split my heart in two.
Arcadia Falls – Carol Goodman

Carol Goodman’s seventh novel begins slow and gentle, you hardly realize you’re being pulled in until you find yourself wishing the train ride was a little longer, or the clock went a little slower so that you could keep reading.

Arcadia Falls is set in secluded, forested upstate New York at a private arts high school founded in the early 1900s by Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt. In the present, Meg Rosenthal finds herself at Arcadia after the death of her husband. Meg has fled suburban Long Island and taken her daughter Sally to Arcadia to save Sally from the troubled path she’s chosen to cope with her father’s death. Meg’s study of fairytales, primarily the one written by the founders of Arcadia, leads her to hope this place, nestled among apple orchards and forests, will be a haven for her and Sally. But Meg’s research leads her to discover that there is much more to Vera and Lily’s story than what many believe. The whole of Arcadia is still haunted by Lily’s untimely death back in 1947, and when a student of Arcadia dies in the same chilling manner as Lily, Meg begins to question if the beautiful outward appearance of Arcadia hides something more sinister in its past.

Three stories are told seamlessly in Goodman’s novel; the story of Vera and Lily and the beginning of Arcadia; the story of their fairytale The Changeling Girl; and the story of Meg and Sally and present-day Arcadia. The fairytale motifs ripple in and out of these stories, with pagan rituals and themes of religion and consequence. But through it all is a beautiful tale; a tale of the fragile yet unbreakable bond of mother and daughter, of the fire and heat of passion and lust, of the beautiful sadness of art and life.

Set in such a secluded place, with so many lives centered on and surrounded by art, Arcadia Falls made me want to walk among its hallowed halls; stone and wood and secretive. With the exception of the general terrain surrounding Arcadia, I very much visualized the place and people all from Goodman’s skillful writing and descriptions. Without going overboard, she made Arcadia a realistic place and time, with real people. The story is fabulously suspenseful and dark, but also beautifully tragic in a small way. It doesn’t leave you guessing so much as just when you think you’ve figured it out, and you’re feeling quite smart and proud of yourself, you’re proven wrong.

Arcadia Falls will do for many readers what Elizabeth Kostova failed to do in her novel The Swan Thieves. Though I enjoyed The Swan Thieves, the general gripe from its readers is their confusion over the resolution of hidden secrets. Arcadia’s secrets are plentiful, but they are resolved in an artistic and literary way, while still keeping the tension and suspense. I wanted to read this novel late into the evening to get to its conclusion. The end is quick and slightly jumbled, but the beauty of the story, the feeling of reading a good mystery, pulls you through.

5 stars

(I received this book from the publisher for review)

Teaser Tuesdays: Arcadia Falls

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. This week my teaser comes from Carol Goodman’s eerie and mysterious fifth novel, Arcadia Falls.

I touch the worn cloth cover, recalling the last lines I read: We came to paradise already carrying the seeds of its destruction. And yet, she and Vera had lives happily for nineteen years before disaster struck. What kind of love triangle smoldered so long before bursting into flames? (119)

So far this novel has the makings of another five-star rating, which would make it my third in a row, very rare. Stay tuned!

In My Mailbox Monday: Lightning, Innocence, & Arcadia Falls

I had a better week than last week, but that’s partly because I bought two books for myself. In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren and Mailbox Monday is hosted by The Printed Page. Leave your links here and over there!

The first book I knew I was going to buy was The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. I gave in after seeing the movie preview a couple too many times. I love the book right now, read The Sunday Salon down below this post and you’ll see why. And the best part? It only cost me 38 cents! Thanks to $5 in Borders Bucks and a 33% off coupon! So awesome.

The other book I bought for myself last week was The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I’ve always loved everything I’ve read by her, but only read one of her novels so I think I should catch up with that. I would have preferred and edition with a better cover, but I bought it from my favorite used bookstore for $2.13 so I’ll get over it.

And the book I truly received in my mailbox was Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman. This one sounds so intriguing, I can’t wait to start it. Here’s a description from Random House:

Dire financial straits and a desire for a fresh start take Meg and Sally from a comfortable life on Long Island to a tucked-away hamlet in upstate New York: Arcadia Falls, where Meg has accepted a teaching position at a boarding school. The creaky, neglected cottage Meg and Sally are to call home feels like an ill portent of things to come, but Meg is determined to make the best of it—and to make a good impression on the school’s dean, the diminutive, elegant Ivy St. Clare.

St. Claire, however, is distracted by a shocking crisis: During Arcadia’s First Night bonfire, one of Meg’s folklore students, Isabel Cheney, plunges to her death in a campus gorge. Sheriff Callum Reade finds Isabel’s death suspicious, but then, he is a man with secrets and a dark past himself.

Meg is unnerved by Reade’s interest in the girl’s death, and as long-buried secrets emerge, she must face down her own demons and the danger threatening to envelop Sally. As the past clings tight to the present, the shadows, as if in a terrifying fairy tale, grow longer and deadlier.

 

So what did you get last week?