The House on Fortune Street

by Margot Livesey

It seems like mutual good luck for Abigail Taylor and Dara MacLeod when they meet at university and, despite their differences, become fast friends. Years later they remain Abigail, the actress, allegedly immune to romance, and Dara, a therapist, throwing herself into relationships with frightening intensity. Now both believe they've found "true love." But luck seems to run out when Dara moves into Abigail's downstairs apartment. Suddenly both their friendship and their relationships are in peril, for tragedy is waiting to strike the house on Fortune Street.

Told through four ingeniously interlocking narratives, Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street is a provocative tale of lives shaped equally by chance and choice.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Contemporary, Novels, British Literature, Adult Fiction

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 6, 2008

About the author

Margot grew up in a boys' private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught, and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. After taking a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England she spent most of her twenties working in restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published in Canada in 1986. Since then Margot has published nine novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on Fortune Street, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury and The Boy in the Field. She has also published The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing. Her tenth novel, The Road from Belhaven, will be published by Knopf in February, 2024.

Margot has taught at Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon, Cleveland State, Emerson College, Tufts University, the University of California at Irvine, the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and Williams College. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists' Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. Margot currently teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished this a while ago but I’ve been unsure how to rate it. Decided on 3.5. A bit slow to begin but then I was hooked.

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd give this one 4.5 stars. Well-written with compelling intertwining narratives told from four different perspectives, the central ones being Abigail (a confident, overachieving actress/theatrical producer with a hard-edged personality) and her college friend Dara (a less confident, emotionally intense therapist who's been unsuccessful in relationships). Surprisingly, though, the book starts with Sean, Abigail's boyfriend, a long-suffering perfectionist grad student unable to finish his dissertation on Keats. Then the narrative switches for the only time to the first-person told by Cameron, Dara's father, who provides background about a tumultuous point in Dara's childhood (Livesey adeptly balances his sympathetic and creepy characteristics). The third section, switches back to the third person and focuses on Dara, and the fourth on Abigail. There's an element of mystery to the story so compelling that I could barely put the book aside until the end, then I regretted it being over.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livesey is exploring the disconnect the exists between our unstated private desires and feelings and the desires/feelings we choose to present to the world and the harm it does. Using four different characters (each one connected to a British author - Keats, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Bronte/Virginia Woolf, and Charles Dickens - who know each other she explores the assumptions they (and we as readers) make and the consequences of those assumptions. I thought is was an extremely skillful book, that easily avoids pathos despite an incident that would lend itself to such a presentation. Now, all I have to do is figure out who I want to give the book to so I can talk to them about it!

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just finished reading this book. I feel like my insides have been turned-out and thrown on the sidewalk. I want to weep long and hard for Dara, even though she is nothing more than a fictional creation of Margot Livesey's mind. That perhaps, speaks, to the power of Livesey's work. The novel is broken into four parts; each part is presented from the perspective of a different character. We learn about each individual's life and then how each of them sees the same event/s that form the core of the novel. The novel is bleak (but not depressing) raising as it does some very uncomfortable issues for the reader to ponder. Lewis Carroll fans might be particularly interested...I must say that as sympathetically as Livesey presents her characters, I was uncertain about how I felt about Cameron and his feelings. One of Livesey's strengths is her ability to illustrate the ambivalences surrounding this particularly fraught issue.

Let me add this after reflecting upon this book overnight...why, oh why, is it always the men who end up so blameless in these things? Though we receive little insight into Edward's life, he walks away unscathed, but everyone else's life is either literally destroyed, or smashed up in some way. Livesey does complicate things (of course) though the character of Alice/Abigail (?)--women can be just as much to blame as men, and therein lies the rub. Where do you draw the line? Is one kind of affair really worse than the other? How do you draw lines in the sand and should you even try? A though-provoking book. It probably deserves something higher than a 4, but doesn't quite reach the levels of brilliance that some of the books ranked 5 have attained.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very similar to Olive Kitteridge in that it gives several different perspectives of people with intersecting lives. Again, it makes me sad to see their futile attempts to piece together a meaningful existence and their brokenness- so evident in the decisions they make and the directions their lives are steered in.

But I also couldn't put it down. I found myself wanting to read more and hoping for a redeeming moment that made all their suffering worthwhile- that maybe they would learn something.

This is a great conflict for me in choosing books to read. This book is about real people and real life. The struggles we face, our own brokenness and how it impacts our decisions- and how without a foundation, without an anchor to hold us steady- we float aimlessly through life not knowing where we belong or if we are doing the right thing- are we really happy?

Sometimes, I would like to just escape into fantasy or another world where things end up happy and good and evil are neatly kept separate. Yet, I cannot deny the value of wrestling with these characters even when I bristle at times when faced with their flaws and am appalled by the choices they make.

[Jodie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although the prose in this book is normally a style I really like; sparse and straightforward, the characters are just very difficult to get along with. We have 4 narratives in this book, and it is too much, probably because of the stultifying amount of heavy subjects the author goes into. I had no idea, and if I did I would not have chosen this book, the themes this book would cover. I don't shy away from a difficult read, infact I usually prefer it. A couple of them on their own would have been better for me. I mean who wants to read, no matter how good the writing, a narrative 4 times over on voluntary euthanasia, suicide, pederasty, depression, cancer and infidelity? Not me, but I perplexingly carried on thinking that after the end of the first narrative it might change pace. It didn't. God almighty it was serious, not a joke or a smile throughout. I did like the references to Dickens and Keats - but the rest left me utterly drained so that I cannot believe I finished it (mind you there was some skimming straight to the dialogue only in the last half).

[Kyla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I approached Section 2 warily - wait, this story is told from multiple, separate perspectives? Oh dear. But once I pushed past that anxiety, I quite enjoyed it - it'd be a 3.5 if I could mark it so. The problem is, I believe the four separate narratives were designed to convince me why the main character did what she did - and I still didn't completely buy it by the end. Not a waste of time, exactly, just not the most judicious use of it either...

[Karla Huebner]

This was a deftly constructed novel that nonetheless failed to interest me deeply in most of its characters. Four sections focus on the four main characters, but only the first-person narrative of Dara's father Cameron really held my attention and prompted my sympathy. The opening section about Sean, a PhD student who has left his wife to live with the beautiful and talented but not very lovable Abigail, gave me a mild dislike of both Sean (presented as so weak-willed and vacillating) and Abigail (so efficient and generally lacking in compassion) which was only somewhat mitigated by later sections that showed each in a more appealing light. Nor did Abigail's friend Dara capture my evidently hard heart. The three young characters were all people much like people I've known and been friends with, so it is not that I cannot care for people with their general characteristics, but I felt that for the most part here I was seeing them at their least engaging, which prompted me to want to shake Sean and Dara and tell them to get their sorry lives together. By the end of the book, I had developed more of a liking for Abigail and seen some of her fundamental strengths, but that did not really make up for much. The friendship between Abigail and Dara, which should be central to the book, never came to life for me beyond that Abigail believed she valued friendship over romance while Dara was obsessed with finding love.

Bottom line: it is well done in its way, and many readers clearly find it an engrossing and moving tale, but while I wanted to like it better, I found it quietly dreary rather than fascinatingly so.

[Tobeylynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had enjoyed Livesey's Eva Moves the Furniture, so decided to pick up the advance reading copy of The House on Fortune Street when I stumbled upon it in the ALA conference exhibits several years ago. It languished on the bookshelf until I picked it up again to get me through a couple days in bed with a cold. And I'm glad I did. It is a well-written engrossing book of intertwined lives and how actions and secrets of others can have unforeseen consequences across relationships and generations. The book starts slowly with the story of Sean, who appears rather ordinary apart from the fact that he was ardently pursued and persuaded to leave his wife by Abigail, a seemingly brilliant, independent, and confident young woman. But halfway through Sean's story I realized that things were not as they seemed and was compelled to continue reading to try to understand what was going on in the lives of the characters, especially Abigail and Dara. It is hard to say that I "enjoyed" this book, as there are uncomfortable aspects in each of the main characters, although I came to care for all of them in some way, empathizing with how all of us make decisions or take action without complete knowledge of others' intentions and unconscious motivations or even of our own. But the book was well worth reading, and I find myself still pondering it days after finishing it.

[Jennifer Campaniolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this novel on the Friday before the long weekend. I was going up to Maine to spend a few days in my in-laws cabin on a pond, and I wanted a novel that would absorb me. And this one fit the bill. Sometimes when a book gets excellent reviews from the top book critics, I personally find the novel boring. But this book earned rave reviews, and was suspenseful and engaging. It's told from four characters' points of view: Sean, a divorced student living with his former mistress, Abigail, and doing his thesis on Keats; Cameron, the father of Dara, who has a secret passion that causes all kinds of wreckage in his life; Dara, who lives with Sean and Abigail in the downstairs apartment of Abigail's house on Fortune Street; and Abigail herself, an actress with a seemingly charmed life, but a sad past. The story is a puzzle that is assembled by each of these characters in turn, until the satisfying ending.

Margot Livesey is a MA resident and teaches at Emerson College. I'd love to take a writing class with her!

[Maryellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly amazing example of fluid prose and linking of characters into a full circle in a story based on love and it's unsettling subtexts. Livesey writes about darkest desires, what is left aside in its pursuit and the consequences. The writing is not overly done for dramatic effect, rather it flows and pulls the reader in to a realistic feel for the characters. Told through four characters, the first gives us the ultimate event and the following are the story in relation to the individual and overlaps with all four. Rather than making the story convoluted, this just expands all elements of the story's main focus. Will definitely find more of Livesey's works.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Livesey, a professor at Emerson College in Boston, is a master of character development. She evokes her subjects' lives and multilayered emotional states so vividly that commonplace scenes contain novelty and tension. Though the story is divided into four self-contained sections, each narrated by a different character, critics were pleased to note that Livesey adeptly maintains control of the intricate plot. Most were charmed by her vibrant prose, sparkling with clarity and insight, and her frequent references to the works of such literary masters as Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bront_

[Carol Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad that I recently discovered Margot Livesey. She writes well and her stories are worth reading. She likes to link her stories to literature, and I like that.

The House on Fortune Street is, as its title implies, about people who live or have lived in a particular house. This house is in London.

The first character is a man who is writing a dissertation about Keats but for lack of funds has to do hack writing. We learn that he has left his wife for the woman he's living with.

The next section is about a man who feels that he has unspeakable urges. He also is linked with a dead writer, but to tell which writer could be a spoiler. The character is likeable, almost too sympathetic given his predilection. However, the book does not go into gruesome detail.

His grown daughter, a therapist, lives in the house's lower-floor apartment. The third section is about her.

The characters are believable, and their dilemmas are moving. The reader has no doubt that these could be real people.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a marvelous novel told from four different points of view. The interconnected characters all tell a piece of the larger story, and each with slightly ( and in some cases vastly) different memories and insights. Livesey undertook a difficult creative task with this one, and I think she succeeded beautifully. It kept me reading from start to finish, and there were interesting and believable surprises all the way to the end. I couldn't imagine a better way of telling this story, and so the four separate stories that made up the whole did not feel contrived. She also did not make the mistake of wrapping everything up too neatly. As in real life, every character knew some of the things, but not all of the things, that had shaped their lives.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't love the plot but I enjoyed the writing.

[Morningstar Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been re-reading Margot Livesey lately. My favorite remains Banishing Verona, but I've enjoyed The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The Missing World. With characters who are eccentric and flawed, these books offer an impulse to befriend them in one chapter, and unfriend in them in the very next.

[Lisa Mettauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is my good fortune to have discovered Margot Livesey’s The House on Fortune Street. It has many of the things I love in a book: a London setting, allusions to British Literature, precise and lyrical language and a mesmerizing story. Yum.

The titular house is owned by Abigail, who bought it with money inherited from an aunt. Her best friend from college, Dara, lives on the first floor. Dara is actually the center of the story - the three other main characters all have a connection with her. The story is told in from the points of view of these four characters, yet is not the same tale told four times. It’s a gradual unraveling of the lonely lives of the narrators, each one’s life illuminating the others.

It begins with Sean, a Keats scholar, who has just moved in with Abigail - who pursued him so relentlessly that he left his wife for her. He is having difficulty with the last section of his dissertation and he easily drops it when he gets a contract for a book on euthanasia. But right after he moves in, Abigail almost disappears from his life; she is furiously trying to build a new theater company. While Sean is temporarily distracted by the interviews he does for his book, his loneliness is palpable.

We hear next from Cameron, Dara’s father, of his life while married to Fiona and raising his two children. A lovely man - he is a wonderful husband and father - he has a secret flaw. A dabbler in photography, he finds himself drawn to the photos Charles Dodgson - Lewis Carroll - took of Alice Liddell. His life is changed forever during a camping trip when his flaw is suddenly revealed.

Dara, a therapist for a woman’s center, moved into an apartment in Abigail’s house in order to have a private place to bring her new boyfriend, Edward. She met Edward much like Jane Eyre met Mr. Rochester - while she was quietly drawing a river scene, Edward fell at her feet. Dara becomes overly devoted to him - canceling dates with Abigail and others to be with him. Her dependence on men dates back to the same aforementioned camping trip.

Lastly we hear from Abigail. Raised by parents who seemed just like Jeanette Walls’ in The Glass Castle, she moved constantly when she was a child, so much so she barely went to school. She was grounded by visits to her grandparents every summer. Her grandfather, a German immigrant, stressed the importance of school and read to her from Dickens - the author he read to learn how to be English. She met Dara in college; Dara took her home on holidays and gave her the family she so needed.

Livesey has created some fascinating characters here. The connection each has with the British authors enriches each person’s narrative. Though there is lots of loneliness and sadness in this novel, it is filled with a certain hopefulness, well, for most of them. Great novel.

[Roswitha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liesl Schlesinger devotes the first three paragraphs of her NYT review of The House on Fortune Street to a discussion of spinsterhood and then declares that in this novel, Margot Livesey explores the question, "What does it mean to be an unmarried woman?" This is puzzling. There are plenty of relationships in the novel -- a romantic relationship, a couple of marriages, father-daughter relationships -- but if you're looking for a theme, it should be something much more complicated, less reducible to a single term. The novel's first section introduces the reader to the not-terribly spinsterish Sean, who receives an anonymous correspondence suggesting that his live-in girlfriend Abigail, for whom he left his wife, is having an affair with his partner in a book venture. Abigail is one of those "it" girls: beautiful, popular, and on her way to becoming very successful. She's also hard-working and dedicated. Trouble is, she's not very dedicated to Sean. And, at the end of this section, when something bad happens to her friend and downstairs tenant Dara, we instinctively want to blame Abigail and her selfishness. We would like to read more about this selfishness. It would, the reader feels, be a great idea for Livesey to tell us all about it. Instead, the next section is told from the point of view of Dara's father, and while this runs contrary to readerly desire, it turns out to be pretty interesting. Dara's father is not who we were expecting him to be. Then we have the story of the lovelorn Dara, an empath who words as a therapist but is stuck in her narrative -- the story she tells herself about why her life is the way it is. And when we finally hear from Abigail, in the novel's last long chapter, she turns out to be a great girl, and a better friend than the self-centered Dara deserves. So what has all this to do with spinsterhood? You be the judge. As far as I'm concerned, this perceptive and intriguing novel by one of our best literary realists isn't so much about a topic as it is about a technique. Livesey tells each story from a single point of view, but when she changes the point of view, we see all the things that are missing from the previous story -- and how unprepared these characters are to genuinely connect with each other. Margo Livesey has created another page-turner out of this material, a novel that will not disappoint. Unless, of course, you were expecting a book about spinsters.

[Nicole Dillie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I have studied with Margot and like her personally. I also happen to enjoy her novels.

This book engages with Jane Eyre among other works. It is not a direct answer to it (or any of the other books involved) in the way that others including Jean Rhys's superb Wide Sargasso Sea are. Instead, it engages more subtly, evoking the primary characters through a corresponding literary work. In some ways this is a book about people who read, but it is also a book about people who love in all the wrong ways.

The protagonist of the first section, Sean, is an unsuccessful Keats scholar. The second section is written from the perspective of Cameron, Dara's father, who is fascinated by Lewis Carroll and shares his uncomfortable fondness for young girls. Dara's romance in part 3 with a lover appropriately named Edward parallels the story of Jane Eyre, only not to the happy ending Dara envisioned. Abigail's story evokes Great Expectations, even as she plots to make Sean, the first section's narrator, leave his wife for her.

As unlikely as it may seem, the four non-chronological sections (Sean has already left his wife for Abigail at the opening of part 1) combine to form a whole that unfolds the tragedy of one life wasted amid a world rife with well-meaning people, ill-luck, bad ideas, and missed chances.

This novel brings to life characters who could easily be dismissed or demonized in real life. Dara throws herself into relationships with self-destructive abandon. Sean leaves his wife for another woman. Abigail is that other woman. Cameron, the great triumph of the novel, is so wonderfully likeable that when the reader finds out he is a pedophile -albeit struggling against the attractions he knows are wrong- we already love him and can sympathize with his struggles.

Not the cheeriest novel you are likely to read this year, but one that is doubtlessly intellectually and emotionally rewarding.

[Laurel-Rain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abigail Taylor and Dara McLeod meet at university in Scotland, where despite their differences, they forge a fast friendship.

Over the years, the friendship ebbs and flows, the emotional and geographical distances between them often magnified by these differences. Abigail becomes an actress and Dara becomes a counselor at a women’s center, where the clients are often the victims of some kind of abuse.

When many years later, Dara begins renting the downstairs flat in a house Abigail owns in London, the house on Fortune Street that symbolizes a great achievement for Abigail, their friendship seemingly grows closer. But events conspire to trouble their friendship and their relationship, while tragedy lurks around the corner.

We see the story unfurl gradually, from different points of view...First, there is Sean, Abigail’s live-in lover; then Cameron, Dara’s father; Dara brings her own perspective to the tale; while Abigail paints the final touches.

We discover that Abigail and Dara are not that different after all. They each suffered traumatic losses at critical points in her childhood. Abigail has never had a home…her
parents were like gypsies---moving about, changing jobs, losing money, living hand-to-mouth.

They literally robbed Abigail of that foundation of belonging somewhere. Dara, whose father left the family without a word when she was only ten, suffers that loss of self-esteem that often accompanies such an event. Cameron, who seems cold and unfeeling to his daughter, has suffered his own traumas and has a secret fear that defines every action he takes.

When these underlying definitive events are gradually revealed, the final moments feel almost inevitable.

"The House on Fortune Street" is a heart-wrenching saga of love, loss, secrets and betrayal---the ingredients of a
memorable story.

[Gail Goetschius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The House on Fortune Street is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I nearly rated it a five, but not quite. It really had all the elements that I look for in a novel. The plot was good with some intrigue, yet the novel is not plot focused. It's beautifully written, and most importantly it has complex, fully rendered characters. Each character has both good and bad qualities, none more drastic than Cameron whose struggles to overcome his desires left a pit of dread in my stomach. I surprised myself by the empathy I felt for him, surely a testament to Livesey's skill.

The structure of the book is skillful as well. Each character's perception of and involvement in the climatic action keeps the intrigue going despite our knowledge of what happens. I really loved the literary allusions cleverly entwined with each character. They add another level of understanding and enjoyment. The most significant of the themes deals with the lifelong effects of trauma in childhood. All of the events and characters are connected by betrayals of loved ones, and the devastating consequences of each .

It is certainly a book that made me think. I am anxious to have someone else read it and discuss the juicy issues with me. I also intend to look for other novels Livesey has written.

[Priscilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I don't know what's wrong with me but I hated this book. I found the writing so utterly dull I could barely stay awake. The structure was interesting and the references to the four novelists helped string the narrative along, but I could have cared less about these self-involved characters and found it utter drudgery to go back and finish the book. They were so two-dimensional and their motivations so predictable. Of course Abigail is a brilliant actor, of course she gets a scholarship to Yale Drama, of course she founds a theater company and succeeds. I get that she's a Dickens character for whom life is either tragic or brilliant, but since she gets the last word, couldn't we have a few more nuances?

I think Livesey worked too hard on the literary references and forgot to make her characters flesh and blood contemporary people. Life was only hard for them because of their own inner struggles, not because life tossed them curve balls. They had no layers! Is this what goes for good fiction writing now? I despair. I'm just glad the torture ended this morning. This book goes directly to the thrift shop without stopping at the homes of any family or friends.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The NYTBR inexplicaby refers to this as a book about "spinsters" even though two of the main sections are narrated by men and even though....the book has nothing at all to do with "spinsters"; nor is it a treatise on women choosing not to marry. Nor is it, as they also say, a Rashomonlike tale.

So, what is it? Told in four discreet sections by two male and two female characters, it is a disquisition on loneliness and isolation and, most important, the secrets we fear to share because...we fear, sometimes correctly, that if we do, that person who is most important to us will no longer see us the same way, thereby removing the relationship we so need in order to feel validated ourselves.

There is a woman at the center--the woman who takes care of everyone else, and seems not to be important in and of herself, but she is, eventually, the linchpin, the true center person, masked as the helper.

Beautifully written and carefully constructed, I was totally absorbed in the read and in awe of the author's skill at creating this very complex, all too believable world.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An surprising study of four connected people and the secrets that both bind and separate. This book was on the Entertainment Weekly list of the top fiction of the year; intrigued, I picked it up, for while I had purchased it for the Library, it hadn't really registered on my radar. As I started the novel, I wondered why it had made such an impression; the story begins with Sean, an academic who can't work on his dissertation, has become somewhat unhappy with the woman he left his wife for, etc. I was reminded of Byatt's "Possession," a far superior take on academic romance. I kept reading, though, and found myself hooked -- the narrator leaves out much of what you, the reader, want to know, very much like real life. Sean's section abruptly ends, and almost immediately into the next section, which focuses on another character, I was hooked. Without my realizing it, Livesey was illuminating other sides of the tale, presenting me with what I had missed and what the characters would likely never know. I gobbled up the rest of the book. Thank goodness I read those year-end lists!

[Jessica J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the description in the book jacket to be somewhat misleading. Abby and Dara's relationship didn't feel like the major focus to me, and I certainly didn't notice anything about luck in the themes. Describing this book to others, I have said that it's about a young woman's suicide told from four different points of view. I found that structure -- the four different stories woven together into one -- to be very interesting, and it allows the reader to piece together Dara's psyche bit by bit. That being said, I do wish Livesey had spent just a little more time with Dara; I would have liked to have read more about the decision to commit suicide from her point of view. Similarly, I almost wish that her narrative had come after Abby's. Ending on Abby's point of view was just a little too jarring for me. Otherwise, brilliant.

[Sasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Livesey has a nice style of writing but I wondered how she came up with this plot. I enjoy books written in several different viewpoints but that only works if all the viewpoints are not disturbing or uncomfortable. The chapter with Cameron was extremely morose and it was hard for me to find that it was written in a sympathetic manner. Perhaps it was because it hit close to home for me and, as a teacher, I felt disgusted. Adults know what is inappropriate and Cameron is no exception. I did see the character of Abigail and Dara in myself and many of my female friends especially in the way that we view romantic relationships and, more importantly, how we deal with the end of these "so-called" love affairs (or affairs of the heart). I would have enjoyed this book more if the Cameron section was left out.

[Jean Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some beautiful sentences in this book and a couple of insights that have stayed with me, but I never felt very engaged with it or invested in the characters. At one point, someone mentioned Alistair, and I thought, "Who is Alistair again?" Then I shrugged and just kept reading because the characters all seemed the same to me anyway. For the most part, I didn't buy characters' justifications for their actions. (Though the first character we meet, who was not writing his dissertation while selling his services as a writer-for-hire seemed somewhat familiar.) I posted this book on Amazon, and when it sold, I rushed through the last 30 pages. Meh, I say. YMMV.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book ok, but there wasn't a lot to it. Frankly, none of the characters were very likable. The "strong" female character was seemingly unable to engage in a real, loving relationship. Most of the characters were self absorbed, and the one main character that wasn't was simply pathetic. However, perhaps the idea of the book is about peoples flaws, and how those around them perceive those flaws. The story itself was ok, but not plot driven, it is character analysis. I don;t regret reading it, but it's not on my list of books that I recommend to others.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still trying to decide how I felt about this book. Well, if nothing else, it really did make me think. So many complexities, secrets, unspoken words. Family relationships, romantic entanglements and friendships were all elements of the story, with the underlying knowledge that nothing is as it appears on the surface. I liked the author's writing style, but this was in no way an easy read. When I was describing this book to my teenage daughter, I think she summed it up best by saying "Mom, you are most definitely reading a tragedy."

[Joan Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book. It is an overlapping story told from four different perspectives. Each of the characters lives are shaped by childhood events as well as fate. Very well written - it drew me in and I couldn't wait to find out more about each character.