House Lights

by Leah Hager Cohen

Late in her twentieth year, Beatrice, who dreams of a life on the stage, is confronting a home life torn asunder. She mails a letter on the sly to her grandmother, a legendary actress long estranged from the family, sparking events that will change her life forever. Powerfully written and psychologically intricate, House Lights illuminates the corrosive power of family secrets and the redemptive struggle to find truth, forgiveness, and love.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 9, 2007

About the author

Leah Hager Cohen has written four non-fiction books, including Train Go Sorry and Glass, Paper, Beans, and four novels, including House Lights and The Grief of Others.

She serves as the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

Reviews

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

While in some ways the execution was disappointing and warranted three strars, I ejoyed this book a lot and don't want to be overly harsh.
This is a well crafted and beautifully woven story of an only child, Beatrice, whose parents - both therapists - create a small world for her that is filled with symphonies, gourmet dinners and a sense of elitism. She grows up believing in the image of her superior parents and eventually decides to become an actress, thus making contact with her actress grandmother whom her mother has been estranged from for years.
Around this time Beatrice discovers that her father has been accused of sexual misconduct with his patients and this sets her world into a talespin. She struggles with having the image of her parents sullied, and, in a nice parallel, ends up harboring similar anger to her parents as her mother did to hers.
Cohen's sentences are beautiful, and I enjoyed reading just about every page of this. However, it troubled me that there was no sense of time (this is told in flashback and yet there is little detail to help me understand time passing), that for all that Beatrice thought to eloquently, her dialogue never revealed this to be true, and that she had no real depth of character on her own, outside of narrative. It was hard to root for her, to get to know her, to understand who she was, as much as she was a pawn in an intellectual discourse. The parents were a little better sketched, but as it wasn't their story, that didn't really help the issue.
At times Cohen seemed more in love with her prose than with her characters or their story, and that created distance for me which made for a less satisfactory read.
Overall, however, I would recommend it for its strengths which I feel outweigh the weaknesses.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't say that this one was quite as "tantalizing... captivating... provocative" as Booklist promotes. It took nearly 150 pages to really get into this novel and the whiny tone of the 20 year old protagonist almost left me considering quitting mid-passage, except that I was stuck in a series of airports, attempting to make my way west in a snowstorm (fun, eh?).
Because this book “loosely” fits a play structure, the author attempts "acts" as formatting, but I found myself longing for a chapter break and disappointed that the final scene occurs 20 years into the future with a large gap of time left untouched, and when we do resume the story, Beatrice’s mother dies in a car crash, leaving many matters unresolved.
Choppy would best describe this novel's structure and though I found a few phrases well delivered, I was left disappointed. I had read Cohen's nonfiction work in the mid-1990s during some research efforts into special education needs in the classroom (Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World). Perhaps more informative efforts or pure non-fiction are a better fit for her writing style?
Too bad this one didn't quite satisfy my travel/leisure reading time.

[Lauren Nagel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This starts out as your typical fictional memoir. It is narrated by a soon-to-be 20 year old and at first focuses on her own unusual (and rather superior) family. She sometimes whines, sometimes boasts, but the idea that her family is unique and better than any other is a running theme. Yes they are dysfunctional, but they are their own brand of dysfunctional.

Things begin to change when Beatrice connects with the Grandmother she barely knows and her father is accused of sexual harassment.

The Grandmother is most interesting character in the book, and the only one I'd care to spend any time with. She is a former "Darling of Broadway" and had a very unusual life. She now acts a little and holds weekly Salons. Beatrice doesn't know her she and Beatrice's mother haven't barely spoken since Bea was born.

From there, the novel goes into a couple directions. One is Beatrice's journey into acting, with the help of her Grandmother. The other is her relationship with a man her father's age. Both are interesting, the acting more so.

Then there's the issue of the father. The mother's explanation is that he didn't realize that what he was saying was offensive. Come on, the man is a PhD phycology professor. He knew. It's interesting to see how the mother makes excuses for believing and staying with him.

I had never thought about psyche of the person who is actually doing the harassing. I don't know if this is typical. Bea finally finds out that it has happened 10 times.. After this last one, the father seems to fold into himself and age rapidly. I have no sympathy for him. I sorta understand why his wife stays with him--there is a certain psychology in women staying with batterers, philanderers, and I guess harassers. His storyline was just icky and I didn't did understand while he reacted to being accused like that. It's not like it was the first time.

I also found the ending to be unrealistic. Not a book I would recommend.

[Claudette Dunk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with the New York Times Book Review cover blurb: "House Lights is artfully constructed . . . Cohen writes with the scrupulousness of someone fashioning a short story . . . ." Reading House Lights, I was charmed by Cohen's writing. As the title reverberates between its theater meaning and the notion of shedding light on house secrets, so does the action in the novel carry layers of meaning. The characters were very real to me; I never lost track of even the most minor players. The description of the "Farm," a theater workshop in a barn in the Berkshires, was so vivid, I wanted to drop everything and head up to the Berkshires. Particularly key for me was the scene in which Bea's grandmother, in her role as acting coach, gets Beatrice to run back and forth shouting out snippets of her opening lines until they become meaningless. They become meaningless but, somehow, stripping those lines of meaning allows Beatrice to connect with their meaning and improve her performance. In the same way, House Lights explores truths that are not wholly true and falsehoods that are not altogether wrong. It explores relationships that possibly shouldn't be, but are. . . the whole messy world of good intentions, bad outcomes, and flawed performers. For me, this novel brought home the insight that there is no single truth but a myriad of conflicting truths that coexist continually, if not peacefully.

[Rob Forteath · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very subtle and engaging story of a young woman whose home life is crumbling while she is simultaneously making a leap forward in her own development. It is told from her point of view, and with much precision. The prose is very "Times New Roman" in character, much like her upbringing. The normal circumstances of her young life -- her pointless job giving tours, the young man at work who has a crush on her -- are made irrelevant by the weight of her father's fall from grace and her desperate grasping at the one whiff of an opportunity that has presented itself.

Both story lines progress very rapidly; over the space of a few months everything is settled. We are led through it all expertly, with wonderful depictions of Beatrice's internal life. Everything feels real and unforced (apart from some forgivable coincidences that conveniently synchronise the two halves of the story), and the characters are excellent.

But then, oh dear... there is an extended, ham-handed, and completely unnecessary epilogue set 21 years later. If you stop reading when she leaves the Farm, you will be left with a better impression from the book than if you wade through to the end.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

After high school, Bea announces to her parents that she wants to become an actress instead of going to college. Her parents agree to give her a year off to pursue acting and then she must go to college. Both her parents are therapists and her father is a respected professor as well. They live a charmed, academic life and Bea believes her family is perfect. That all changes when her father is accused of sexual harassment and her in-control mother starts to show weakness. Bea has never known her famous actress grandmother and she doesn't know why. She writes to her and asks to meet. The grandmother invites her to join her weekly salon and soon Bea finds herself part of the world of her dreams. Will she be able to get her dream career and find out her family's secrets? This novel started off slow and I considered quitting but it picked up by page 50. I did end up enjoying the novel. Bea's character seemed a little whiny at first but I grew to like her.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate a well-written book, and this certainly is one. This is a good story about family dynamics, told from the vantage of time as a woman looks back on her 20th year when everything fell apart and she launched into what would become her adult life. I won’t say more than that because I think walking in blind on this book is the only way to go. Don’t read anything about the plot - not even the jacket - before reading it. It’s motifs of the theatre and what it is to act and the crumbling of the house are all powerful in this book and the characters are rich and messy. I couldn’t put it down.

[Judith Witzig · Rating 3 out of 5]

An edgy look into the life of a young woman, Beatrice, as she steps away from her parents into the bigger world around her. Bea's relationships with her Grandmother, her mother are well drawn. The relationships with men in her life, her flawed father and her director Hale are more fraught. Her adolescent angst plays out in the parlance of a time before Twitter, Instagram or Facebook consisting of literal face time.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was alright. I found it to be well-written with good character development. It was just that I did not really like any of the major characters. Some of the minor characters were interesting, though. Throughout the story, everyone in Bea's family was trying to come to terms with the father's inappropriate behavior. It didn't sit well and the book became a chore to read.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is a coming-of-age story, but I never felt it really broke free of its adolescent point of view, though it tried very hard to. It's written beautifully (Cohen probably can't help but write beautifully), but I found myself at the end, skating mindlessly across whole paragraphs, eager to get to the end and break out of this rather hothouse world.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure why this was a New York Times Notable Book. One of the reviewers stated that she wrote like someone fashioning a short story—this should have been a short story. It was a slow slog to the end. The 3 stars were generous, probably a 2-1/2 stars.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably 3.5. I can't put my finger on why not a 4...good story, good characters. I think too much angst on the part of the main character.

[Roxanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written novel exploring family dynamics.

[Keri Pinckney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my kind of book

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this a few years after it came out, in my mid-20s, slightly older than the narrator is for most of the book. I remember finding it engrossing, but troubling and not entirely satisfying. I put in on the shelf, and over the past decade plus, remembered mainly that it was a bit disappointing, but that one of the main locations was a house that would have been very near where I had an apartment for a couple of years.

Without spoiling anything, the final section of the book jumps ahead twenty years, to where the narrator and I are now again the same age. Thinking that a disappointing book I didn’t remember well should perhaps not be taking up room on my shelf – but conflicted because of the geographical connection, I reread it before (probably) offering it up to a Little Free Library.

On the whole, my opinion hasn't changed: Engrossing. Readable. But troubling and not entirely satisfying. But perhaps in a book that circles around different kinds of transgressions, that may be as it should be. And on that note...

Content warning: There is no depiction of sexual assault, but accusations that the father behaved inappropriately to young women (and his insistence that whatever he said was fine, actually), are a key plot thread throughout the book.

The first time around, I think part of my disappointment was that I really wanted this to be a theater book, but it's really a family drama book, a coming of age book. Most of it takes places over a six month period that encompasses a series of major life changes for Beatrice Fisher-Hart. And while part of that is the beginning of her acting career, the real spotlights are on the shifting relationships within her family. The book starts with Bea reaching out to her grandmother, who has had a rocky relationship with Bea's mother as long as Bea can remember. And meanwhile, Bea and her parents are struggling with the consequences of her father's dubious actions.

The descriptions we're given of these transgressions seem designed to leave wiggle room – bad enough to warrant a complaint, but minor enough for forgiveness to feel possible. Or at least, I think that's the intention. Whether due to shifts made by the Me Too movement, or whether it's just being 14 years older, I have little to no patience with Dr. Jeremy Hart.

[Diablevert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this. The main character's house in this book was set in the very neighborhood I grew up in (though I was of the duplexes she could see from her window, and she of the large single family homes with the blue oval historical society plaques out front) and it was a very weird experience, reading something set upon the very blocks you walked on as a kid...I suppose New Yorkers must experience it all the time, but New York feels like it belongs to all the world. West Cambridge doesn't. But the signs and signifiers of that time and place were so intimately familiar to me I couldn't help but feel a little frisson I delved in.

Once past that though, the book was pretty good. The plot concerns Beatrice, a child of shrinks and just about to turn twenty, whom her parents have begrudgingly allowed to put off college in order to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. She contacts her estranged grandmother, herself a famous actress, in order to gain a toehold into theater, and the book goes from there. The book reviews described it as a coming of age tale, but I'd say it's equally a family secrets sort of a book, in which the main drama is finding out about whatever terrible past has caused all these people to be so messed up.

The one trouble I had was with the author's voice---it is clear and self-knowing, analytical. Which makes sense and is fine---Beatrice is intelligent, the child of shrinks, and an actress; one would expect this character to be adept at describing her emotional states. But it doesn't leave much for the reader to do. We get her motives straight from her mouth, and in many places in this books I felt it would have been better, drawn me in more, made me care more, if I had to figure them out from action, to discern them from glance and gesture and dialogue.

This is a bland review. Sorry.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

After loving Cohen's novel "The Grief of Others," I immediately picked up this earlier work, and it took my until halfway through to decide that I agreed with the Amazon editorial review that described this book as "overly precious." I skimmed this review before reading this book and desperately wanted to disagree with it. But it fits this book to a tee.

Google [define:precious]: "Affectedly concerned with elegant or refined behavior, language, or manners... cute: obviously contrived to charm"

What I appreciated about "The Grief of Others" was Cohen's searing exploration of grief and its effect on relationships. There wasn't a stray word or sentence in that book. And the characters were real, compelling, believable.

This book lacked the depth and nuanced exploration of human nature, and the characters annoyed me. To summarize:
Bebe: The protagonist. Wants to pursue an acting career. 20 years old.
Bebe's parents: Accomplished, cool, calm, collected, brilliant Harvard professors and practicing psychologists. Absolute stereotypes.
Bebe's grandmother: Boston Brahmin, famous actress.
Bebe's grandfather: Jewish director who committed suicide during the McCarthy era
Bebe's love interest: a 48-year-old father figure who has directed her grandmother in plays

Those characters were just too... what's the word? Precious? I don't know. Too idealized and too stereotyped -- particularly as Cohen attempts to flesh them out. It's like some person's fantasy world of modern-day high society in Boston. And the characters just weren't layered enough to anything more than fantasies.

Eh. Again it took me until I was halfway through to decide I was done, but I am.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked Cohen's 'Heart, You Bully, You Punk' when I read it a few years ago. In this one I found her prose a bit stilted and unsuited to the character, even when taking into account that the narration is retrospective. The actual story and plot were pretty compelling though, and I plowed through the words just to see what would happen and be revealed--maybe the way a high school student would read Shakespeare in preparation for a quiz? Shouldn't I be reading at this point for language?

In some ways the retrospection really did the story a disservice; the character, twenty years later, has made her judgments and summations on the situation and offers them, again and again, as sort of topic sentences. Where are you left to go? And yet the point of telling did allow for a seamless transition in the last section to the present, and the ending was somewhat redeeming in that it offered, for me, a satisfying and believable conclusion. Finally, as the narration more closely inhabited the character, she could surprise, and I bought her.

[Christi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel showed a lot of promise in the beginning. I was anxious to find out the reasons behind 20-year-old Bebe's(aka Beatrice) mom's strangely strained relationship with her own mom, and the mysterious harrassment complaints against her dad. However, this book just plodded along, with Beatrice not really gaining much maturity until 20 years later--once her mom unexpectedly dies. This book just frustrated me--the main character insisted throughout that her infatuation with (and subsequent marriage to) a man 28 years her senior was not a way for her to fulfill a parental role left empty when she shuns her own father--however, the author never really gives the reader any insight whatsoever as to why this bright, young lady is attracted to a man her own father's age vs. men her own age, with whom she is shown having great rapport. Pretty disappointing overall, but not a terrible read.

[Robbins Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fisher-Harts are a unit of three: only daughter Bea, and her doctor-professor parents. They live in Cambridge, and though Bea's grandmother Margaret Fourcey lives just across the river in Boston, Bea rarely sees her, due to a longstanding break between Maggie and her daughter Sarah (Bea's mother). But in the year after high school, Bea seeks out her grandmother, angling for entrance into her salon of theater actors, playwrights, and directors. The following summer changes Bea's understanding of her family, and sets the course for the rest of her life. Bea narrates these events from a distance of twenty years, when she is married and living in New York, working as an actress.

Leah Hager Cohen has a special talent for understanding and communicating the inner workings of the human heart and mind. Though her books are not epic sagas or especially action-packed, they are pitch perfect in their observations about how people truly are.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautifully written story! Beatrice, 19 years old at the beginning of the book, has dreams of being an actress. Her grandmother, from whom hew own mother has long been estranged, is a legendary actress. Beatrice develops a relationship with her grandmother and becomes a part of her inner circle of new and experienced people who are actors or directors. At the same time, over that year and the next year, Beatrice's relationship with her parents is torn apart by allegations of her father's inappropriate behavior in his professional career and related secrets from the past. The prose is so beautiful, not overly emotional but powerful. Family relationships, the intricacy of love and betrayal, are he primary focus of this story. "Powerfully written and psychologically intricate" describes it quite well.

[Cwinter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engaging, complex characters with intricate webs between them that should make for an excellent story, but not worth the read. Such a disappointing ending! ANother goodreads review caught one problem - the first person does all the analysis of who does what and why, nothing to figure out really. A classic case of tells and shows, but the telling gets dry an dull. Being told why people do what they do is not nearly as interesting as figuring out what you have been shown. The last section of the book jumps ahead 20 years and is contrived, whiny, and not as well-woven as the original set-up. I was disappointed that such a well-built set of characters and relationships could end up so trite and boring after 300 pages.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world in which Beatrice grows up is quite controlled. Her parents are psychologists and intent on making the correct appearance to the outside world. As a result of this, this book feels proper, upright, classy. Interestingly, Beatrice wants to be an actress. She reaches out to her estranged grandmother for help in getting into the acting world. Along Beatrice's path, she finds a reoccurring question: Is acting best in portraying truth, or in the telling of a lie?

I found the language of the book emphasized the world in which Beatrice was raised. It also underlined the question that continues to come up for her throughout her life.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bea's life in Cambridge begins to unravel, when she discovers her father has been indiscreet with someone he is mentoring. Around the same time she reunites with a grandmother, long estranged from her mother. Bea's ambition is to act, as her grandmother did. Over the next months, she begins attending salons in her grandmother's house, and discovers fascinating people. Her relationship with her parents continues to deteriorate. Bea is twenty and finds a man 28 years her senior very attractive who produces plays. They move to the Berkshires for the summer where Bea assumes a small role in Hale's play.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the world of Leah Hager Cohen, particularly of her first book, Train Go Sorry. So I was eager for HOUSE and was surprised to find how formal the prose felt, how explanatory versus suggestive or evocative. This was a difficult book to write, no doubt, and there is clearly so much thought behind this story of a young woman who finds her way in the world of theater as her parents' lives begin to fall apart. But I did wish that there was more surprise in structure and language than I found here.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a hard time rating this book. I definitely enjoyed the book and was into the storyline, however, the writing style really put me off. Instead of being "show don't tell" it was definitely more telling than showing. Most of the book is a flashback, and there are even flashbacks within the flashbacks. But these felt more like "background" than part of the story. I felt like there was a huge distance between me and the story and I was never fully engaged with the characters and what was happening to them.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel traces the relationship between a young aspiring actress and her grandmother, who had been a famous actress in her day. The novel concentrates on the two women and their relationship with the mother/daughter who is the bridge between them. The book is a decent coming of age novel, but I think it tries to cover too much ground in too few pages. It seems to skip around a lot. I also enjoyed the beginning, when the author was setting up the story, much more than the end, because I felt that her conclusion was not nearly as strong.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beatrice is an actress that is not supported by her love ones,besides her grandmother that wants her go after her dreams. Her dad is accused of sexual harrasment and she falls in love with such an older man, that can cause her problems in the near future. This book disappointed me, the characters were developed, but I did not enjoy this better than The Grief of Others, the pacing was slow and the ending was weak.

[Mary Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the premise and the plot of this book very interesting, but was totally bored and unconvinced by the narrator, both her character and her voice. I thought it was over-written in a way that didn't feel like the authentic first person voice of a 19-year-old girl. Because of this I feel like I never really got a good feel for the narrator/protagonist as a person. Also, as a matter of personal preference, I found the "epilogue" (I can't remember whether it's labeled as such, but that's how it functions) trite and unnecessary. Overall, harmless and fairly absorbing, but not my cup of tea.

[Cayt O'Neal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cohen has such a gentle, supremely elegant style that she never fails to charm me, no matter what the subject matter. This was a nice, smooth piece of fiction that provided earth-shattering insight exactly when I needed it, right in the midst of a soft, steady stream of prose. Though this main character was not my favorite of hers, I loved the rest of the characters and the world Cohen crafted in this story. If you have not read her, please do!