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Arcadia Falls
There once was a girl who liked to pretend she was lost. . . .
Meg Rosenthal is driving toward the next chapter in her life. Winding along a wooded roadway, her car moves through a dense forest setting not unlike one in the bedtime stories Meg used to read to her daughter, Sally. But the girl riding beside Meg is a teenager now, and has exchanged the land of make-believe for an iPod and some personal space. Too much space, it seems, as the chasm between them has grown since the sudden, unexpected death of Meg’s husband.
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.
Meg Rosenthal is driving toward the next chapter in her life. Winding along a wooded roadway, her car moves through a dense forest setting not unlike one in the bedtime stories Meg used to read to her daughter, Sally. But the girl riding beside Meg is a teenager now, and has exchanged the land of make-believe for an iPod and some personal space. Too much space, it seems, as the chasm between them has grown since the sudden, unexpected death of Meg’s husband.
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.
355 pages, Hardcover
First published March 22, 2010
142 people are currently reading
6307 people want to read
About the author
Carol Goodman
35 books2,898 followersCarol Goodman is the author of The Lake of Dead Languages, The Seduction of Water, which won the Hammett Prize, The Widow's House, which won the Mary Higgins Clark Award and The Night Visitors, which won the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She is also the co-author, with her husband Lee Slonimsky, of the Watchtower fantasy trilogy. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, Literal Latte, The Midwest Quarterly, and Other Voices. After graduation from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin, she taught Latin for several years in Austin, Texas. She then received an M.F.A. in fiction from the New School University. Goodman currently teaches literature and writing at The New School and SUNY New Paltz and lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 655 reviews
August 9, 2016
**This was an advanced reader's copy I received through LibraryThing**
In the beginning, I really wanted to love this book. I really, really did. Toward the middle of the book, I was just hoping to like it. By the end, I was ready to bid it a not-so-fond farewell and move on to something else. The novel sounds as though it's tailor made for me: there's the strained mother/daughter relationship, the pastoral setting at a private school for the arts, dark and eerie fairytales, a judicious dollop of death, and a mystery from the past that is being explored in the present. It's an ambitious mix and, in the end, the novel is weakened by its interwoven plot lines as it desperately tries to tie everything up into a neat little bundle.
Meg Rosenthal is trying to build a new life in the wake of her husband's unexpected death. Even more unexpected is that he mismanaged their finances and, despite the lavish lifestyle to which they were accustomed, he left them with virtually nothing. In the middle of her PhD in literature, Meg sells everything they own and moves her bitter and distant daughter, Sally, to Arcadia Falls, the site of a private school for the arts where she has been offered a teaching position. The job is ideal for Meg as she is studying the feminist fairytales written and illustrated by the school's founders, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt. Sixty or so years ago, Lily died under peculiar circumstances while going to meet her lover, Virgil Nash, and her body wasn't recovered for several months. While it appeared as though she fell off a cliff during a blizzard, rumors and gossip have circulated in the art community and in the small town of Arcadia Falls for years as to whether Lily's death was just an accident. When a young student, Isabel Cheney, falls to her death (in the exact same way Lily did so many years earlier) during the pagan celebration that traditionally opens the new school year at Arcadia, the questions about Lily's death resurface and Meg finds the key to unraveling the truth about what really happened at Arcadia.
The book is beautifully written, although Goodman does have a tendency to throw in too much minutiae that slows down the pace of the story. Other problems that I had with the novel include:
A) Weak, one dimensional characters. The school dean, Ivy St. Clare, walks around the school with apparently little to do other than harass Meg (which begs the question of why she would hire her to begin with). She's so obviously the villain that I'm surprised she didn't walk around rubbing her hands together and cackling with all her maniacal might. Sally is the stereotypical sullen teenager who hates her mother, hates her new school, hates the new town, hates their new house, and, well, just hates everything. Then there's the town sheriff, Callum Reade, our knight in shining armor who shows up occasionally so Meg can get irritated with him without knowing why and he can get irritated with her without knowing why and then they can have sex later without knowing why. I didn't give a rat's ass about any of them.
B) Meg is also an unlikable character. She seems passive, just allowing things to happen to her. At the school, she shrinks away from or avoids any situation in which she might have to act like an adult authority figure. She spends her days reading Lily's journal and never seems to have any actual teaching responsibilities. She occasionally comes up with a lesson plan while crossing the school campus, but that's about it.
C) Meg finds Lily's hidden diary and, while reading it, begins to piece together the events that led to Lily's tragic death. However, she takes for-eh-ver to read it (I would have had that puppy read in one night) and I found the story in the diary to be far superior to the one in present day. Lily and Vera were lovers, but Lily also fell under the spell of Virgil Nash, the painter for whom she became a muse. This love triangle and these characters are far more intriguing, but sadly take a backseat to Meg and Sally.
D) The book seems to want to be in the gothic or magical realism genre, but just can't quite bring itself to commit. This just pissed me off because it was billed as both.
E) So many things are just half-assed: Isabel's death is forgotten as soon as it happens, the folk legend of the white woman of the falls is a bizarre little footnote, a promising character named Toby Potter is made unforgettable and then readily forgotten, etc.
F) Women in this book have a nasty habit of running to the cliff when in danger. It's akin to the slasher film phenomenon of the beautiful girl running upstairs instead of out the front door. Everyone knows disaster happens at the cliff, but they take off like lemmings for it when things go wrong.
G) I had the end figured out halfway through the book. I won't spoil it for you, but I saw that one coming from about twenty miles away and it requires some serious suspension of disbelief. At one point the main character says, "I have to admit it all sounds a little far-fetched." And to that I say, spot on, Meg, spot on.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
In the beginning, I really wanted to love this book. I really, really did. Toward the middle of the book, I was just hoping to like it. By the end, I was ready to bid it a not-so-fond farewell and move on to something else. The novel sounds as though it's tailor made for me: there's the strained mother/daughter relationship, the pastoral setting at a private school for the arts, dark and eerie fairytales, a judicious dollop of death, and a mystery from the past that is being explored in the present. It's an ambitious mix and, in the end, the novel is weakened by its interwoven plot lines as it desperately tries to tie everything up into a neat little bundle.
Meg Rosenthal is trying to build a new life in the wake of her husband's unexpected death. Even more unexpected is that he mismanaged their finances and, despite the lavish lifestyle to which they were accustomed, he left them with virtually nothing. In the middle of her PhD in literature, Meg sells everything they own and moves her bitter and distant daughter, Sally, to Arcadia Falls, the site of a private school for the arts where she has been offered a teaching position. The job is ideal for Meg as she is studying the feminist fairytales written and illustrated by the school's founders, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt. Sixty or so years ago, Lily died under peculiar circumstances while going to meet her lover, Virgil Nash, and her body wasn't recovered for several months. While it appeared as though she fell off a cliff during a blizzard, rumors and gossip have circulated in the art community and in the small town of Arcadia Falls for years as to whether Lily's death was just an accident. When a young student, Isabel Cheney, falls to her death (in the exact same way Lily did so many years earlier) during the pagan celebration that traditionally opens the new school year at Arcadia, the questions about Lily's death resurface and Meg finds the key to unraveling the truth about what really happened at Arcadia.
The book is beautifully written, although Goodman does have a tendency to throw in too much minutiae that slows down the pace of the story. Other problems that I had with the novel include:
A) Weak, one dimensional characters. The school dean, Ivy St. Clare, walks around the school with apparently little to do other than harass Meg (which begs the question of why she would hire her to begin with). She's so obviously the villain that I'm surprised she didn't walk around rubbing her hands together and cackling with all her maniacal might. Sally is the stereotypical sullen teenager who hates her mother, hates her new school, hates the new town, hates their new house, and, well, just hates everything. Then there's the town sheriff, Callum Reade, our knight in shining armor who shows up occasionally so Meg can get irritated with him without knowing why and he can get irritated with her without knowing why and then they can have sex later without knowing why. I didn't give a rat's ass about any of them.
B) Meg is also an unlikable character. She seems passive, just allowing things to happen to her. At the school, she shrinks away from or avoids any situation in which she might have to act like an adult authority figure. She spends her days reading Lily's journal and never seems to have any actual teaching responsibilities. She occasionally comes up with a lesson plan while crossing the school campus, but that's about it.
C) Meg finds Lily's hidden diary and, while reading it, begins to piece together the events that led to Lily's tragic death. However, she takes for-eh-ver to read it (I would have had that puppy read in one night) and I found the story in the diary to be far superior to the one in present day. Lily and Vera were lovers, but Lily also fell under the spell of Virgil Nash, the painter for whom she became a muse. This love triangle and these characters are far more intriguing, but sadly take a backseat to Meg and Sally.
D) The book seems to want to be in the gothic or magical realism genre, but just can't quite bring itself to commit. This just pissed me off because it was billed as both.
E) So many things are just half-assed: Isabel's death is forgotten as soon as it happens, the folk legend of the white woman of the falls is a bizarre little footnote, a promising character named Toby Potter is made unforgettable and then readily forgotten, etc.
F) Women in this book have a nasty habit of running to the cliff when in danger. It's akin to the slasher film phenomenon of the beautiful girl running upstairs instead of out the front door. Everyone knows disaster happens at the cliff, but they take off like lemmings for it when things go wrong.
G) I had the end figured out halfway through the book. I won't spoil it for you, but I saw that one coming from about twenty miles away and it requires some serious suspension of disbelief. At one point the main character says, "I have to admit it all sounds a little far-fetched." And to that I say, spot on, Meg, spot on.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
October 23, 2015
2.5 Stars.
This was a misfire for me. I don't know if maybe reading it would be better, instead of listening to it like I did.
There were just too many characters and too much confusion, and when the secrets of the old boarding school and its surrounding forest were revealed, my reaction was this:
This was a misfire for me. I don't know if maybe reading it would be better, instead of listening to it like I did.
There were just too many characters and too much confusion, and when the secrets of the old boarding school and its surrounding forest were revealed, my reaction was this:
December 18, 2009
For those that enjoy both historical fiction and mystery, this is a good choice. Tho most of it takes place in a contemporary town called Arcadia Falls, the modern day murder mystery parallels a murder that occured in the 1930s.
The modern day heroine is Meg. She is newly widowed and struggling both financially and emotionally and arrives at Arcadia's private art school with her sullen teenage daughter in tow where she proceeds to teach and unravel two murder mysteries. The modern day murder of a teenage girl parallels the murder of an artist in the 1930s. Both young women may have been pushed off a cliff. Could the same person be responsible for both?
Fans of historical fiction will enjoy the excerpts from the 1930s told from the dead lady's journal. The journal contains struggling artists, lesbian lovers, abandoned babies, and a love triangle turned sour.
This fails to hit the five star mark for me namely because half of the characters are bratty teenagers that I felt needed a good talking to. If in my teenage years, I had run to a bar with a fake i.d. and got a tattoo in a seedy parlor, I would not have been allowed to return to my dorm with just a mere few words of scolding nor simple dish duty as punishment. I found that just a bit implausible.
Thus, four stars. Higly recommended for those who want a murder mystery minus the blood and gore.
I won this thru goodreads and I'm very pleased with my first book win.
The modern day heroine is Meg. She is newly widowed and struggling both financially and emotionally and arrives at Arcadia's private art school with her sullen teenage daughter in tow where she proceeds to teach and unravel two murder mysteries. The modern day murder of a teenage girl parallels the murder of an artist in the 1930s. Both young women may have been pushed off a cliff. Could the same person be responsible for both?
Fans of historical fiction will enjoy the excerpts from the 1930s told from the dead lady's journal. The journal contains struggling artists, lesbian lovers, abandoned babies, and a love triangle turned sour.
This fails to hit the five star mark for me namely because half of the characters are bratty teenagers that I felt needed a good talking to. If in my teenage years, I had run to a bar with a fake i.d. and got a tattoo in a seedy parlor, I would not have been allowed to return to my dorm with just a mere few words of scolding nor simple dish duty as punishment. I found that just a bit implausible.
Thus, four stars. Higly recommended for those who want a murder mystery minus the blood and gore.
I won this thru goodreads and I'm very pleased with my first book win.
January 4, 2010
I wanted to like this book better than I did. Described as an "enthralling work of literary fiction that follows a mother and daughter as they uncover the sinister secrets of an isolated boarding school", I expected a gripping plot with rich, descriptive prose. Instead I was frustrated by a plodding, unbelievable story line. It particularly bothered me that the untimely death of a student at the school barely evoked an emotional response from the characters, let alone the parents of the student (or the parents of other students), who remained completely off the pages. Wouldn't there be a bit of an uproar if a student died because of what could be seen as negligence by the school?
It also irritated me how the secret diary was treated. It had the answer to this mystery, and yet the mother reads it bit by bit, day by day, instead of devouring it. If I was her, I would have skipped ahead to find out the secret instead of leaving it and worrying about it being found by others.
This book was an advance reader edition provided for free. Unfortunately, the storytelling did not live up to its billing for me.
It also irritated me how the secret diary was treated. It had the answer to this mystery, and yet the mother reads it bit by bit, day by day, instead of devouring it. If I was her, I would have skipped ahead to find out the secret instead of leaving it and worrying about it being found by others.
This book was an advance reader edition provided for free. Unfortunately, the storytelling did not live up to its billing for me.
July 9, 2011
Things I Liked:
The atmosphere of the book was perfect. It was creepy and fairy tale-esque and kept reminding me of how gorgeous and mysterious nature can be. I loved the aspects of the school's history that related to fairy tales and the mysterious veil that was spread across the whole place. The story was pretty intriguing as well, near the end. But what I think carries this book is the setting and the descriptions of the time, the location, etc, that make you feel like you are a part of this forgotten little corner of the world. Goodman has a wonderful ability to create setting.
Things I Didn't Like:
I admit that, while the story did suck me in, the ending I found just a little too unbelievable. I was struck with how convenient, how over the top, almost melodramatic it became. I had a hard time buying into some of the revelations near the end and especially the motivations. Still, an interesting and absorbing book.
Full review at One Librarian's Book Reviews.
The atmosphere of the book was perfect. It was creepy and fairy tale-esque and kept reminding me of how gorgeous and mysterious nature can be. I loved the aspects of the school's history that related to fairy tales and the mysterious veil that was spread across the whole place. The story was pretty intriguing as well, near the end. But what I think carries this book is the setting and the descriptions of the time, the location, etc, that make you feel like you are a part of this forgotten little corner of the world. Goodman has a wonderful ability to create setting.
Things I Didn't Like:
I admit that, while the story did suck me in, the ending I found just a little too unbelievable. I was struck with how convenient, how over the top, almost melodramatic it became. I had a hard time buying into some of the revelations near the end and especially the motivations. Still, an interesting and absorbing book.
Full review at One Librarian's Book Reviews.
April 3, 2011
UGH! The only reason I'm putting this on Good Reads is TO SAVE YOU because if you read the back, it sounds like a book that is interesting, gothic, and has a good mystery. It ends up trying to beat you over the head with about a billion different moral platitudes, not to mention a complete disintegration of narrative thread, and implausible "tying it all together" in the end. Plotholes big enough to drop a truck through, and (my biggest bug) 2 different narrative voices, that actually sound THE SAME. Awful awful. Do not waste your time. I saw people were giving it 3 or 4 stars which boggles my mind.
June 22, 2012
How many times will people fall off the same cliff in exactly the same spot before someone puts up a fence? And how many times can you "fool" the reader into thinking Lily's child is one person and not another before the entire cast of characters gets a chance to be her offspring and the reader runs screaming from the book in disgust? Not enough evidently. Tiresome and predictable, despite the plot twists, and too much purple prose to lift this from romance fiction into literature. How bourgeois I sound! But really I'm just disappointed.
December 18, 2011
For the most part I want to say: Wow. Oh wow! This novel is so-o-O amazing and so-o-O beautiful I was immediately drawn in. Plus, it's multilayered, so it's like getting two books in one. Always a good deal, right. But that's for the most part. I'll get to the least part in a few...
meg just recently lost her husband and moves to a remote boarding school (Arcadia Falls) in upstate New York with her typical moody, morose, and artistic teenaged daughter, Sally. Meg is pretty excited about the job as instructor because (a) she's never really had a job since Sally was born and has no idea how else to support the two of them and (b) Meg is working on her dissertation on fairy tales in 19th century woman's literature and one of the women that she is studying happens to be a co-founder to Arcadia Falls.
Now that's the forefront of the story: Meg and Sally in Arcadia Falls and the mystery surrounding a death (or two) during the pagan traditions honored by the school. The underlying story of the co-founders of Arcadia Falls (lovers Lily and Vera) are more than just a backdrop as the past catapults itself into the center of the mysterious deaths.
I really loved the story of Lily and Vera as much as I did Meg and Sally's. Lily and Vera not only manage Arcadia Falls but they write and illustrate a fairy tale, "The Changeling", which is shared throughout the novel. "The Changeling", from my understanding is a common literary convention used in fairy tales where a character is replaced by a mirrored alternative. I had little information about fairy tales, and this book definitely made me start googling left and right for more bits and information. Plus, I felt like I was being taught by Meg when she would lecture some of the students, and hell, her activities were pretty cool. I wished I was at Arcadia Falls.
So here's the thing. There were bits and pieces of this book where I would read a chapter and then zone out. Man, it was that beautiful. My mind did not want to read further but I didn't want to leave the mood that it thrust me into. I can only compare it to those moments when you're sitting in a warm bubble bath and you know hat this must be heaven. That relaxed feeling? Where your eyes are halfway open and halfway closed and your mind is just THERE? In that moment? It was kinda like that.
Plus, pulling literature into literature is a convention that I absolutely adore and Goodman does that plenty. I mean, what?! The setting is a boarding school. Of course there is homework and references!
And now you're probably wondering that I did open implying there were aspects of the novel that I just did not dig as much as I dug the rest...it's true. Don't you get terribly frustrated when an author is being brilliant and then the brilliance seems to be an insecurity so they try to one-up themselves only to reach fail status? Well, that's kinda sorta what happened here. There were twists and turns and I felt exhilarated and rushed and gasped for air. Fingers were gripped against the book because I didn't figure it out. And then, when the ride should have slowed down, it kept going. At full speed. No longer was I screaming and ooooohing and ahhhhhhing, but I was a twelve year old kid who had just eaten hot dogs and cotton candy and soda. I wanted off of the ride about thirty pages earlier.
Still a good read? Sho e'nuff! In fact, better then good. But not great. Plus, I'm totally gonna check out some more Goodman.
And I'm really stoked that I've found this whole new genre of books that I'm getting into. I want more literary fiction where they bring in folklore and fairy tales. What you got for me?
meg just recently lost her husband and moves to a remote boarding school (Arcadia Falls) in upstate New York with her typical moody, morose, and artistic teenaged daughter, Sally. Meg is pretty excited about the job as instructor because (a) she's never really had a job since Sally was born and has no idea how else to support the two of them and (b) Meg is working on her dissertation on fairy tales in 19th century woman's literature and one of the women that she is studying happens to be a co-founder to Arcadia Falls.
Now that's the forefront of the story: Meg and Sally in Arcadia Falls and the mystery surrounding a death (or two) during the pagan traditions honored by the school. The underlying story of the co-founders of Arcadia Falls (lovers Lily and Vera) are more than just a backdrop as the past catapults itself into the center of the mysterious deaths.
I really loved the story of Lily and Vera as much as I did Meg and Sally's. Lily and Vera not only manage Arcadia Falls but they write and illustrate a fairy tale, "The Changeling", which is shared throughout the novel. "The Changeling", from my understanding is a common literary convention used in fairy tales where a character is replaced by a mirrored alternative. I had little information about fairy tales, and this book definitely made me start googling left and right for more bits and information. Plus, I felt like I was being taught by Meg when she would lecture some of the students, and hell, her activities were pretty cool. I wished I was at Arcadia Falls.
So here's the thing. There were bits and pieces of this book where I would read a chapter and then zone out. Man, it was that beautiful. My mind did not want to read further but I didn't want to leave the mood that it thrust me into. I can only compare it to those moments when you're sitting in a warm bubble bath and you know hat this must be heaven. That relaxed feeling? Where your eyes are halfway open and halfway closed and your mind is just THERE? In that moment? It was kinda like that.
Plus, pulling literature into literature is a convention that I absolutely adore and Goodman does that plenty. I mean, what?! The setting is a boarding school. Of course there is homework and references!
And now you're probably wondering that I did open implying there were aspects of the novel that I just did not dig as much as I dug the rest...it's true. Don't you get terribly frustrated when an author is being brilliant and then the brilliance seems to be an insecurity so they try to one-up themselves only to reach fail status? Well, that's kinda sorta what happened here. There were twists and turns and I felt exhilarated and rushed and gasped for air. Fingers were gripped against the book because I didn't figure it out. And then, when the ride should have slowed down, it kept going. At full speed. No longer was I screaming and ooooohing and ahhhhhhing, but I was a twelve year old kid who had just eaten hot dogs and cotton candy and soda. I wanted off of the ride about thirty pages earlier.
Still a good read? Sho e'nuff! In fact, better then good. But not great. Plus, I'm totally gonna check out some more Goodman.
And I'm really stoked that I've found this whole new genre of books that I'm getting into. I want more literary fiction where they bring in folklore and fairy tales. What you got for me?
April 30, 2015
The one other book I've read by this author, The Lake of Dead Languages, was excellent, and is amongst my favourite reads of this year so far. It was a disappointment, then, to find this one so formulaic and uninspired in comparison. It was a good story and certainly the kind of thing I generally enjoy - the problem, for me, was that it was so similar to The Lake of Dead Languages.
The protagonist and narrator is the single mother of an only daughter and, at the start of the book, has moved from the city to take a teaching job in an isolated, old-fashioned, self-contained and seemingly idyllic boarding school. There's an old, presumed lost, journal revealing secrets from the past, and students disappearing and dying in mysterious circumstances, possibly related to the practise of pagan rites and rituals. One of the teachers isn't what they seem to be, and there are a lot of secrets regarding parentage and characters suddenly finding out they're actually someone else's daughter. And the narrator embarks on a romance with a rugged local police officer.
This is a description of the plot of Arcadia Falls; it's also a description of the plot of The Lake of Dead Languages. And the latter was written in 2002, while this one was published this year. It feels as though the author is just going through the motions and rehashing a previously used plot; the two are remarkably similar and this really inhibited my enjoyment of the book. I don't know whether I was perhaps just unlucky in picking the one title that is very like the one I've already read, or whether all Goodman's novels are variations on the same theme. I still have another book of hers, The Ghost Orchid, in my to-read pile (the result of an Amazon recommendations-based spree), so I suppose I'll find out when I get round to reading that.
The protagonist and narrator is the single mother of an only daughter and, at the start of the book, has moved from the city to take a teaching job in an isolated, old-fashioned, self-contained and seemingly idyllic boarding school. There's an old, presumed lost, journal revealing secrets from the past, and students disappearing and dying in mysterious circumstances, possibly related to the practise of pagan rites and rituals. One of the teachers isn't what they seem to be, and there are a lot of secrets regarding parentage and characters suddenly finding out they're actually someone else's daughter. And the narrator embarks on a romance with a rugged local police officer.
This is a description of the plot of Arcadia Falls; it's also a description of the plot of The Lake of Dead Languages. And the latter was written in 2002, while this one was published this year. It feels as though the author is just going through the motions and rehashing a previously used plot; the two are remarkably similar and this really inhibited my enjoyment of the book. I don't know whether I was perhaps just unlucky in picking the one title that is very like the one I've already read, or whether all Goodman's novels are variations on the same theme. I still have another book of hers, The Ghost Orchid, in my to-read pile (the result of an Amazon recommendations-based spree), so I suppose I'll find out when I get round to reading that.
March 29, 2010
Arcadia Falls is a book to get lost in. Author Goodman takes here signature themes, women, water, and academia, and wraps them in a Russian doll of a fairy tale. But it's a fairy tale for adults, and it's a tautly plotted mystery as well. Having lost her husband, and most of their money along with him, Meg Rosenthal must give up grad school, where she's been working on her thesis about folk stories, and start anew with her grieving and angry teenage daughter, Sally. Meg lands a job teaching lit at a remote girls' school in upstate New York, which was founded originally as an art colony. Coincidentally, one of the stories she's been studying, about a changeling, was written and illustrated by Lily Eberhardt, a co-founder of the institute. Lily set the story in Arcadia Falls, and Meg recognizes all the physical elements at once, finding herself drawn into Lily's world. When first a student dies of a fall, and Meg finds Lily's hidden journal, her absorption grows intense.
Few writers are capable of creating atmosphere as well as Goodman. Her imagery is so evocative that you find yourself thinking in those same images. At Arcadia Falls, those images are overwhelmingly feminine. The names of the major characters are taken from folklore and mythology. The "pagan" rituals that the students so enjoy, as at Samhain and Beltane, are meaningful and ominous. At times, certain characters find their identities becoming entwined with those long dead. This is a dreamy but fast paced novel with a jolt of a surprise right in the middle. It seems history can repeat itself. And reaching the final page is like coming home.
Few writers are capable of creating atmosphere as well as Goodman. Her imagery is so evocative that you find yourself thinking in those same images. At Arcadia Falls, those images are overwhelmingly feminine. The names of the major characters are taken from folklore and mythology. The "pagan" rituals that the students so enjoy, as at Samhain and Beltane, are meaningful and ominous. At times, certain characters find their identities becoming entwined with those long dead. This is a dreamy but fast paced novel with a jolt of a surprise right in the middle. It seems history can repeat itself. And reaching the final page is like coming home.
February 6, 2010
I'd never read a Carol Goodman book before so I wasn't sure what to expect starting this book. I have to say that I really enjoyed it! Meg is a totally believable mom with a teenage daughter that reminds me a lot of my daughter. They move to an artsy private boarding school where Meg takes a job teaching at the school loacated in a small rural community in Upstate New York that reminds me of the town I live in.
Meg is familiar with the town because of an old fairy tale called The Changeling Girl that she used to tell her daughter when she was younger. This fairy tale totally captivated me! The fairy tale is woven in and out throughout the book. Soon there is a mysterious death at the boarding school and Meg is drawn into the dark secrets surrounding the school when she finds an old journal.
I won't give away any more of the story because I know you'll want to read it! I really enjoyed Carol Goodman's style of writing. It was so hard for me to put the book down that dinner was noticabely late one night because I just had to find out what happened!
Meg is familiar with the town because of an old fairy tale called The Changeling Girl that she used to tell her daughter when she was younger. This fairy tale totally captivated me! The fairy tale is woven in and out throughout the book. Soon there is a mysterious death at the boarding school and Meg is drawn into the dark secrets surrounding the school when she finds an old journal.
I won't give away any more of the story because I know you'll want to read it! I really enjoyed Carol Goodman's style of writing. It was so hard for me to put the book down that dinner was noticabely late one night because I just had to find out what happened!
March 29, 2011
This book was choppy and uneven. Occasionally you would get drawn into certain scenes or characters, but other times the poor metaphors and overdone references to modern technology or pop culture made it feel heavy-handed. The climax scenes were ridiculously written, like a bad lifetime movie, but other plot-advancing scenes of exploration and observation could be fairly intriguing. I wish the depth and moodiness of some of these moments persisted, and that characters could become more real and fleshed out and less so blank proxies for the reader to port themselves into.[return][return]This could not have been more obviously written for middle-aged women, and while I understand that's the target audience, it became downright pandering at times. It feels like Goodman is churning these out based on a formulaic framework for this sort audience/novel. I would love a more developed, thoughtful and deep version of this book, as I thought the concept and setting were really cool and could be done further justice.
March 9, 2010
Meg is trying to push forward in life and Sally is closing herself off. Meg is unhappy that the two of them have drifted so far apart and with the death of Meg's husband, Sally's father, the bridge between them has been closed off.
Meg wants to move to a new place and start a new life. Money troubles just reinforce the need to move on. Meg accepts a job as a teacher and is desperately trying to make the best of the cards she has been dealt.
When one of Meg's students dies during a bonfire and the sheriff feels that foul play may be the cause, she learns that everyone has skeletons in their closet and some will kill to keep that closet locked.
This stunning book is the work of a truly artistic writer. I plunged into this novel and almost suffocated because I didn't want to come up for air. Read it in one sitting if you can. Consider yourself warned:)
Meg wants to move to a new place and start a new life. Money troubles just reinforce the need to move on. Meg accepts a job as a teacher and is desperately trying to make the best of the cards she has been dealt.
When one of Meg's students dies during a bonfire and the sheriff feels that foul play may be the cause, she learns that everyone has skeletons in their closet and some will kill to keep that closet locked.
This stunning book is the work of a truly artistic writer. I plunged into this novel and almost suffocated because I didn't want to come up for air. Read it in one sitting if you can. Consider yourself warned:)
August 31, 2012
‘Arcadia Falls’ by Carol Goodman
Published by Piatkus, February 2011. ISBN: 978-0-7499-4242-7
Following her husband’s death Meg Rosenthal leaves the wealthy East Coast with her daughter Sally and joins the staff of a smart private school, Arcadia College to teach and pursue her academic fascination with folklore and nineteenth century literature.
Arcadia College, set in a valley against the side of a mountain and on three side’s thickly wooded countryside, was the home of Vera Beecher who established it in 1928 as a colony for artists to develop their talents, particularly female artists, although Virgil Nash was somehow included. Now run by Dean Ivy St Clare Meg quickly discovers Vera and her beliefs are still very much alive. Meg is allocated a cottage in the woods in which Vera and her friend Lily Eberhardt lived for nineteen years until tragedy struck in 1947 when Lily died. The cottage in the woods is frequently shrouded in mist and evoked a fitting environment for the theme running through the book which is the disturbing tale of ‘The Changeling Girl’ and the many interpretations that can be placed on the story.
To continue her own studies Meg obtains from Ivy, Vera’s diaries, and later discovers Lily’s journal, in which she reads, ‘we came to paradise already carrying the seeds of its destruction.
The style of the setting was, to me reminiscent of ‘Miss Pym Disposes’ probably evoked by the vivid characterisation of the female students. Within a day of Meg settling in one of the students is found dead.
This is both a beautiful piece of writing and an intriguing mystery to which one must reach back to the past for a solution. I was totally transported to the period and found myself looking over my shoulder as the suspense built to a frightening level.
Carol Goodman gives the reader a thought provoking tale and an interesting mystery to which she provides a satisfying conclusion, but the tale of The Changeling Girl and its interpretations may remain with you a long time.
I cannot recommend this book to highly, it is a must read.
----
Lizzie Hayes
Published by Piatkus, February 2011. ISBN: 978-0-7499-4242-7
Following her husband’s death Meg Rosenthal leaves the wealthy East Coast with her daughter Sally and joins the staff of a smart private school, Arcadia College to teach and pursue her academic fascination with folklore and nineteenth century literature.
Arcadia College, set in a valley against the side of a mountain and on three side’s thickly wooded countryside, was the home of Vera Beecher who established it in 1928 as a colony for artists to develop their talents, particularly female artists, although Virgil Nash was somehow included. Now run by Dean Ivy St Clare Meg quickly discovers Vera and her beliefs are still very much alive. Meg is allocated a cottage in the woods in which Vera and her friend Lily Eberhardt lived for nineteen years until tragedy struck in 1947 when Lily died. The cottage in the woods is frequently shrouded in mist and evoked a fitting environment for the theme running through the book which is the disturbing tale of ‘The Changeling Girl’ and the many interpretations that can be placed on the story.
To continue her own studies Meg obtains from Ivy, Vera’s diaries, and later discovers Lily’s journal, in which she reads, ‘we came to paradise already carrying the seeds of its destruction.
The style of the setting was, to me reminiscent of ‘Miss Pym Disposes’ probably evoked by the vivid characterisation of the female students. Within a day of Meg settling in one of the students is found dead.
This is both a beautiful piece of writing and an intriguing mystery to which one must reach back to the past for a solution. I was totally transported to the period and found myself looking over my shoulder as the suspense built to a frightening level.
Carol Goodman gives the reader a thought provoking tale and an interesting mystery to which she provides a satisfying conclusion, but the tale of The Changeling Girl and its interpretations may remain with you a long time.
I cannot recommend this book to highly, it is a must read.
----
Lizzie Hayes
March 20, 2010
Forced by the untimely death of her husband to accept a teaching position at an isolated East Coast boarding school called ARCADIA, Meg Rosenthal finds herself immersed in the turmoil surrounding two deaths at the school. One death, that of the schools founder Lily Eberhardt, happened years ago while the other occurs during Megs first weeks at the school.
Through the accidental discovery of a journal written by Lily, Meg uncovers not only the history of ARCADIA's inception as an artist colony for women and its later metamorphosis into a private girls' school, she also becomes privy to the unusual relationship between the schools original founders. With elements of pagan ceremonies and witchcraft not to mention the revelation of long buried secrets, author Carol Goodman immerses the reader in an atmosphere teeming with a sinister and malevolent glow.
For readers with a taste for tales of love and revenge told with a gothic flair ARCADIA FALLS will more than satisfy their reading palate. This is primarily a story of relationships.....those between friends, between mothers and daughters, between students and teachers. It is also a taut allegory imbued with fairy tales and folklore that mask actual social and personal circumstances. This story within a story moves back and forth between the present and the past, as secrets long hidden are resurrected posing imminent danger to our protagonist Meg Rosenthal and her teenaged daughter, Sally. Displaying her storytelling prowess, Ms. Goodman has given us a cast of multi-faceted and well defined, but not necessarily likable, characters and a final reveal containing a myriad of twists and turns plus enough suspense to keep her readers mesmerized. 31/2 stars
Through the accidental discovery of a journal written by Lily, Meg uncovers not only the history of ARCADIA's inception as an artist colony for women and its later metamorphosis into a private girls' school, she also becomes privy to the unusual relationship between the schools original founders. With elements of pagan ceremonies and witchcraft not to mention the revelation of long buried secrets, author Carol Goodman immerses the reader in an atmosphere teeming with a sinister and malevolent glow.
For readers with a taste for tales of love and revenge told with a gothic flair ARCADIA FALLS will more than satisfy their reading palate. This is primarily a story of relationships.....those between friends, between mothers and daughters, between students and teachers. It is also a taut allegory imbued with fairy tales and folklore that mask actual social and personal circumstances. This story within a story moves back and forth between the present and the past, as secrets long hidden are resurrected posing imminent danger to our protagonist Meg Rosenthal and her teenaged daughter, Sally. Displaying her storytelling prowess, Ms. Goodman has given us a cast of multi-faceted and well defined, but not necessarily likable, characters and a final reveal containing a myriad of twists and turns plus enough suspense to keep her readers mesmerized. 31/2 stars
January 23, 2010
When Meg Rosenthal gets a job offer from a private boarding school in Upper New York, she thinks this will be the new start she's looking for. Recently widowed, and with her sixteen year old daughter in tow, Meg makes the move to Arcadia, the art school she's been hired at.
Right from the start, it's apparent that things are done a bit differently at Arcadia. Students--and faculty--celebrate pagan rituals such as Samhain and summer solstice. As Meg (and her daughter) become more emeshed with the school, things begin to take a sinister turn as a student is found dead.
I thought this book would be a great mix of gothic with a bit of mystery thrown in. Instead, it ends up being a lame and very predictable story about mothers and daughters and the past. Also, there's a romance between Meg and the town sherriff that really detracts from the story.
I found Meg a not very believable character, and it takes her forever to figure out what is right in front of her face. Unfortunately, the reader figures things out very early on, so there are no surprises here. I also thought the teen daughter Sally (insert eye roll here) one of the most annoying teen characters I've ever come across, and it's sickening the way Meg caters to her every whim, and is afraid to offend here. The plot itself is construed in a way that everything is conveniently revealed to the characters. So conveniently that it comes off as unrealistic. The one big plus is that the book is a really quick read that requires zero brain power (in fact, at times I wondered if it was a YA novel), so you won't need to spend much time on it.
Right from the start, it's apparent that things are done a bit differently at Arcadia. Students--and faculty--celebrate pagan rituals such as Samhain and summer solstice. As Meg (and her daughter) become more emeshed with the school, things begin to take a sinister turn as a student is found dead.
I thought this book would be a great mix of gothic with a bit of mystery thrown in. Instead, it ends up being a lame and very predictable story about mothers and daughters and the past. Also, there's a romance between Meg and the town sherriff that really detracts from the story.
I found Meg a not very believable character, and it takes her forever to figure out what is right in front of her face. Unfortunately, the reader figures things out very early on, so there are no surprises here. I also thought the teen daughter Sally (insert eye roll here) one of the most annoying teen characters I've ever come across, and it's sickening the way Meg caters to her every whim, and is afraid to offend here. The plot itself is construed in a way that everything is conveniently revealed to the characters. So conveniently that it comes off as unrealistic. The one big plus is that the book is a really quick read that requires zero brain power (in fact, at times I wondered if it was a YA novel), so you won't need to spend much time on it.
March 30, 2010
This book was a take off of The Lake of Dead Languages. She took a winning formula and beat it to death. This author is becoming increasingly predictable for me to read. All her books are the same or some variation of the same.
Something you can always predict in her stories. Someone is a scholar or a teacher. Someone came from a boarding school or is attending boarding school. There's a good chance someone will be adopted and not know. Someone will always be trying to learn, speak, or put in Latin languages or stories.
This book had three of the above. Just like every other book of hers. Yes, Lake of Dead Languages was REALLY good. But it had all the things above and it was fresh. Now it's like please can we not do this again? Or start a teenage miniseries about boarding schools all over the U.S.
I'm torn about how much I truly enjoyed L.o.D.L. and the realization she might not ever again do something so brilliant. I think she knows it too.
By the end of this book, I rolled my eyes and said lets all jump off the clove . I mean why stop now there's still 3 or 4 more characters to destroy, the mom especially needed to go for a swan dive. And are we sure the sheriff isn't related to Lily Eberheardt? Cause everyone else seems to be.
Goodman... you can do better!!! So do better!!!
Something you can always predict in her stories. Someone is a scholar or a teacher. Someone came from a boarding school or is attending boarding school. There's a good chance someone will be adopted and not know. Someone will always be trying to learn, speak, or put in Latin languages or stories.
This book had three of the above. Just like every other book of hers. Yes, Lake of Dead Languages was REALLY good. But it had all the things above and it was fresh. Now it's like please can we not do this again? Or start a teenage miniseries about boarding schools all over the U.S.
I'm torn about how much I truly enjoyed L.o.D.L. and the realization she might not ever again do something so brilliant. I think she knows it too.
By the end of this book, I rolled my eyes and said lets all jump off the clove . I mean why stop now there's still 3 or 4 more characters to destroy, the mom especially needed to go for a swan dive. And are we sure the sheriff isn't related to Lily Eberheardt? Cause everyone else seems to be.
Goodman... you can do better!!! So do better!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 2, 2010
I am sitting here trying to figure out the best way to start this review. So I am just going to jump into the characters. Meg is a recent widow whom sometimes I find annoying. At times I felt she was making choices that shock me. Then other times she seems so strong willed about finding her way after her husband is gone. Such as finding a new job packing up and moving herself and her daughter to the school where she would teach.
Sally also seemed to annoy me. She seemed like a brat. Even though I got that her father just died but she seemed to ALWAYS take it out on her mother. She seemed to have a turn around later in the book which let me dislike her a little less.
Both Sally and Meg fit so well into the book it made it come to life. So they maybe annoying at times but it worked for the book.
All the characters were well rounded and played well into the book.
As for the plot, Well I don't want this to turn people off from this book because it did finally build up. The beginning was slow paced, But mid-way through it went flying. It had me guessing. Nothing ended up being what I thought was going to happen.
The book had so many great aspects, Forbidden Love, Murder, Deceit, mystery. You were definitely left thinking about this book.
Sally also seemed to annoy me. She seemed like a brat. Even though I got that her father just died but she seemed to ALWAYS take it out on her mother. She seemed to have a turn around later in the book which let me dislike her a little less.
Both Sally and Meg fit so well into the book it made it come to life. So they maybe annoying at times but it worked for the book.
All the characters were well rounded and played well into the book.
As for the plot, Well I don't want this to turn people off from this book because it did finally build up. The beginning was slow paced, But mid-way through it went flying. It had me guessing. Nothing ended up being what I thought was going to happen.
The book had so many great aspects, Forbidden Love, Murder, Deceit, mystery. You were definitely left thinking about this book.
September 8, 2012
I'll skip all the similarities to The Lake of Dead Languages, the plot holes, the stock characters, the ridiculous ending, and just sum it up in three words: BUILD A FENCE!
February 24, 2021
I read and enjoyed Goodman’s The Lake of Dead Language several years ago and loved it, so I wanted to read more of her books. Arcadia Falls has a lot in common with The Lake of Dead Language; it features a boarding school, a woman with a past connected to the school starting to teach there, a student body obsessed with pagan rituals, dark secrets, and mysterious deaths. Goodman does seem to have a formula, but that’s why I wanted to read both of these books, so I wouldn’t call it a bad thing. The big draw of Arcadia Falls for me as the focus on fairy tales. The main character, Meg Rosenthal, comes to the school to teach folklore and literature. The founders of the school, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt, are best known for their illustrated fairy tales, which Meg is writing her PhD thesis on. The story of The Changeling Girl was absolutely my favorite part of this book, and I wish the book actually existed. Goodman’s descriptions of the illustrations are dark and beautiful, and I want it!
Goodman absolutely aces creating the a Gothic and eerily beautiful atmosphere in this book. Her descriptions are lovely and truly create an image for the reader. The descriptions are especially striking, particularly ones of the beech tree on the campus. And the images of girls in white dresses running through apple orchards and woods will certainly stick with me. I listened to this on audiobook, and I think that added a lot to the experience. It was such a pleasure to hear these beautiful descriptions read out loud. And the narrator does a great job capturing the voice of each individual character.
The book is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of representation. I was pleasantly surprised to find multiple romantic relationships between women portrayed here because the summary didn’t mention anything about it. Who doesn’t love some surprise women loving women? The main relationship between Vera and Lily is seeped in drama and tragedy, but I think Goodman does a great job crafting the relationship and making it feel real. There are two minor female characters depicted in a positive and loving relationship, which was refreshing to see. They adopt a child together and live happily ever after in a pottery studio. The representation of mental illness wasn’t as great. It does fall into the trap of mentally ill people being violent, crazy, and/or just terrible people. I didn’t think about it while reading the book, but looking back after, it’s stereotypical and I ultimately feel it was just used as an easy out to explain character motivations.
Goodman certainly kept me guessing with the plot. There are so many twists and turns in this book! There were a few that I figured out, but others caught me off guard. But Goodman does hint at them all throughout; I just didn’t put everything together. However, I did feel that some of the plot twists ended up being a little…too much. This was especially the case right at the end. There are so many coincidences that it felt like a Dickens novel, and I couldn’t quite get behind some of it.
Overall, Arcadia Falls is a beautifully written and engaging mystery. It’s a little far-fetched and certainly not without it’s flaws, but I had a lot of fun with it.
Goodman absolutely aces creating the a Gothic and eerily beautiful atmosphere in this book. Her descriptions are lovely and truly create an image for the reader. The descriptions are especially striking, particularly ones of the beech tree on the campus. And the images of girls in white dresses running through apple orchards and woods will certainly stick with me. I listened to this on audiobook, and I think that added a lot to the experience. It was such a pleasure to hear these beautiful descriptions read out loud. And the narrator does a great job capturing the voice of each individual character.
The book is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of representation. I was pleasantly surprised to find multiple romantic relationships between women portrayed here because the summary didn’t mention anything about it. Who doesn’t love some surprise women loving women? The main relationship between Vera and Lily is seeped in drama and tragedy, but I think Goodman does a great job crafting the relationship and making it feel real. There are two minor female characters depicted in a positive and loving relationship, which was refreshing to see. They adopt a child together and live happily ever after in a pottery studio. The representation of mental illness wasn’t as great. It does fall into the trap of mentally ill people being violent, crazy, and/or just terrible people. I didn’t think about it while reading the book, but looking back after, it’s stereotypical and I ultimately feel it was just used as an easy out to explain character motivations.
Goodman certainly kept me guessing with the plot. There are so many twists and turns in this book! There were a few that I figured out, but others caught me off guard. But Goodman does hint at them all throughout; I just didn’t put everything together. However, I did feel that some of the plot twists ended up being a little…too much. This was especially the case right at the end. There are so many coincidences that it felt like a Dickens novel, and I couldn’t quite get behind some of it.
Overall, Arcadia Falls is a beautifully written and engaging mystery. It’s a little far-fetched and certainly not without it’s flaws, but I had a lot of fun with it.
April 16, 2021
Meg Rosenthal, recently widowed and strapped for funds, takes a teaching job at a remote private high school with a focus on the arts. She and her rebellious teenage daughter Sally, who will attend the school, pack up their old vehicle and move to the school campus, settling in a small, decrepit cottage next to a dense wooded area that features at its edge a waterfall with a steep and abrupt drop from a ridge to the bottom of the falls. A dangerous and deadly drop, the reader will discover.
The modern story is intertwined with a second historical story told with the aid of a found journal that slowly reveals the background of the school, which started out as an artist colony, the colony founders and artists, and the many dark secrets that, once revealed, shed light on a modern day murder that has occurred.
While I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book and quite a lot of the story, toward the end I was mildly exasperated by the repetition of a certain plot point, although perhaps it was intentional, as the story revolved around fairy tales, and fairy tales tend to have a certain repetitive pattern. Also, there were some other aspects of the story wrap up that were too far-fetched for my liking.
The modern story is intertwined with a second historical story told with the aid of a found journal that slowly reveals the background of the school, which started out as an artist colony, the colony founders and artists, and the many dark secrets that, once revealed, shed light on a modern day murder that has occurred.
While I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book and quite a lot of the story, toward the end I was mildly exasperated by the repetition of a certain plot point, although perhaps it was intentional, as the story revolved around fairy tales, and fairy tales tend to have a certain repetitive pattern. Also, there were some other aspects of the story wrap up that were too far-fetched for my liking.
August 31, 2020
Technically, I'm giving this book a 4.5 star review, but had to round up. I love the environment Goodman creates when she describes the town and school in Arcadia falls. She manages to blend fairytales and historical fiction with some gothic hints. I would have giving the book 5 stars, but the ending got me. While I loved the twists and turns in the end, there was almost too much, like Goodman kept changing her mind about how she wanted it to end, so she gave us every ending she couldn't decide between. Otherwise, it was a fantastic read, with some beautiful imagery. I would definitely recommend this book, and I would definitely read it again.
Read
August 27, 2018I am interested in the real female artists who inspired this story (Violet Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green) so I hoped to love this book. There were great moments, a nice romance, and a good creepy death at the start, but the backstory and the modern mother-daughter story didn’t quite mesh. And, the ending was, as the heroine herself admits, too far-fetched.
dnf
May 8, 2017DNF at 25% boring
August 25, 2020
Mooi, mysterieus verhaal.
July 31, 2024
Leest super lekker weg. Einde iets te veel van het goede. Teveel personen dus vooral einde verwarrend en iets te ver gezocht in mijn beleving.
March 22, 2012
At first glance, I wasn't sure this would be the sort of book I might normally read…which makes me wonder, what IS the type of book I would normally read and what were my assumptions going into this book. The basic synopsis sets the book up to be a sort of mother-daughter relationship book combined with a sort of self-discovery and some peripheral romance and mystery thrown in. With that sort of description, it sounds like it might border on "chick-lit" and be a little too sentimental for my taste. But for some reason, the more in-depth details of the premise intrigued me.
Meg Rosenthal (the mother) has taken a teaching position at a reclusive, semi-art-commune boarding school while she works to finish her PhD in literature (with a focus on fairy tales, especially 20th century fairy tales). The school is filled with strange myths and legends including a strange death of one of the founders (Lily) 60+ years ago that unraveled the life of the other founder (Vera…also Lily's lover). I think perhaps I was drawn by the suggestion of a literary mystery along with a sort of magical realism as myth and reality intertwine.
The first chapter or two had to work hard to pull me in and get me interested in the characters but the writing was eloquent and lovely and a pleasure to read (though sometimes the descriptions, while poetic and beautiful, slowed down the pace of the plot and made me want to skip ahead). The characters were interesting but sometimes alternated between predictable or a little too dense. At times I felt like I saw their motivations coming from pages away and at other times I wanted to smack them to take the next obvious move. Most of the time, the characters were intriguing and fun.
There are a number of story arcs going on. The two main arcs focus on the death of Lily half a century ago and the death of Isabel shortly after Meg arrives on the campus. These two deaths are parallels in many ways, so much so that it's a little too uncanny, but it sets Meg onto the trail of discovering the truth of both deaths. In addition to these two main plots, there is a lot of character interaction and growth between mother and daughter. Meg is trying to stay focused on her teaching, finishing her PhD, and investigating these deaths, but at the same time she's trying to grow a stronger relationship with her daughter Sally who has been struggling since Meg's husband died. The interactions between teenage daughter and busy mother felt realistic. Since we are generally seeing the world only through Meg's eyes, we never get Sally's reaction to what's going on except through the lens of the concerned parent trying hard to make things work but confused and frustrated at the lack of connection. I really felt that the relationship between these two was one of the strengths of this book.
The other big strength was the backstory of Lily, Vera and Nash (the man who came between them). The romance between these characters was told with the almost poetic language used elsewhere in the book. The love was very beautiful and sentimental and helped draw me in to the plot. When this historical plot collides with the "present day" plot, I felt like the mingling and unraveling of the various tangles was a little contrived, but generally, the stories were interesting and engaging.
The book had a sort of creepy fairy tale quality that worked as a sort wrapping for the entire text (especially poignant since Meg was doing her PhD on fairy tales). The writing is crisp and lovely though sometimes slowed down the reading and even though it was pretty it lessened my engagement in the story. Still, I was interested and excited to see the various plots work to their conclusion. Personally, I felt like the climactic conclusion was a little too "Scooby-Doo-esque" and I wonder if that segment could have been handled differently. But in the end, I liked the way the story wrapped up.
While I didn't necessarily "love" this book, I attribute part of that to it being on the edges of my "normal" reading tastes. However, I enjoyed it enough that I'd actually like to seek out more by this author.
***
3 out of 5 stars
Meg Rosenthal (the mother) has taken a teaching position at a reclusive, semi-art-commune boarding school while she works to finish her PhD in literature (with a focus on fairy tales, especially 20th century fairy tales). The school is filled with strange myths and legends including a strange death of one of the founders (Lily) 60+ years ago that unraveled the life of the other founder (Vera…also Lily's lover). I think perhaps I was drawn by the suggestion of a literary mystery along with a sort of magical realism as myth and reality intertwine.
The first chapter or two had to work hard to pull me in and get me interested in the characters but the writing was eloquent and lovely and a pleasure to read (though sometimes the descriptions, while poetic and beautiful, slowed down the pace of the plot and made me want to skip ahead). The characters were interesting but sometimes alternated between predictable or a little too dense. At times I felt like I saw their motivations coming from pages away and at other times I wanted to smack them to take the next obvious move. Most of the time, the characters were intriguing and fun.
There are a number of story arcs going on. The two main arcs focus on the death of Lily half a century ago and the death of Isabel shortly after Meg arrives on the campus. These two deaths are parallels in many ways, so much so that it's a little too uncanny, but it sets Meg onto the trail of discovering the truth of both deaths. In addition to these two main plots, there is a lot of character interaction and growth between mother and daughter. Meg is trying to stay focused on her teaching, finishing her PhD, and investigating these deaths, but at the same time she's trying to grow a stronger relationship with her daughter Sally who has been struggling since Meg's husband died. The interactions between teenage daughter and busy mother felt realistic. Since we are generally seeing the world only through Meg's eyes, we never get Sally's reaction to what's going on except through the lens of the concerned parent trying hard to make things work but confused and frustrated at the lack of connection. I really felt that the relationship between these two was one of the strengths of this book.
The other big strength was the backstory of Lily, Vera and Nash (the man who came between them). The romance between these characters was told with the almost poetic language used elsewhere in the book. The love was very beautiful and sentimental and helped draw me in to the plot. When this historical plot collides with the "present day" plot, I felt like the mingling and unraveling of the various tangles was a little contrived, but generally, the stories were interesting and engaging.
The book had a sort of creepy fairy tale quality that worked as a sort wrapping for the entire text (especially poignant since Meg was doing her PhD on fairy tales). The writing is crisp and lovely though sometimes slowed down the reading and even though it was pretty it lessened my engagement in the story. Still, I was interested and excited to see the various plots work to their conclusion. Personally, I felt like the climactic conclusion was a little too "Scooby-Doo-esque" and I wonder if that segment could have been handled differently. But in the end, I liked the way the story wrapped up.
While I didn't necessarily "love" this book, I attribute part of that to it being on the edges of my "normal" reading tastes. However, I enjoyed it enough that I'd actually like to seek out more by this author.
***
3 out of 5 stars
April 16, 2013
This contemporary novel is composed of two narratives: the first-person voice of Meg, a recent widow who lands a teaching job at an elite boarding school; and the discovered diary of Lily, one of the artist founders of the school in the 1920's, whose death has never been fully explained. As Meg reads the diary and interacts with the eccentric faculty of Arcadia, she (very) slowly unravels the secrets of Lily's death and other events in the school's past and present. No arguing that Ms. Goodman's pretty sentences can weave a pretty description. No arguing that she can evoke a mood. But that's all I could find star-worthy in this book, and I personally don't read for setting or mood. I read for characters and plot.
The author's characters consist of cardboard. The voices in dialogue are interchangeable, as are Lily's diary voice and Meg's narrative voice. And speaking of the diary, it is ridiculously detailed given that it's written as a letter of confession to Lily's beloved. The intended reader would already know much of the information. (But Meg doesn't, of course, and Meg is the one who must solve the mystery.)
The author clearly wanted her characters to be more than types, but the "depth" doesn't come across because it is never shown in their actions or words. Instead, we only glimpse the fullness of what Ms. Goodman intended when Meg tells us what to think of a character. For example, Meg's first conversation with Sheriff Reade reads as follows (I'm quoting dialogue only and removing the beats/interior monologue):
Reade: "Stop right there. Don't move another inch."
Meg: "What do you mean? I haven't done anything wrong. Reade, isn't it? You're the town sheriff. I'm the new English teacher."
R: "Yes, I know you are, but I don't think you know where you are. If you'll stand still for a second..." [He holds up his lantern to show her the cliff edge at her back.] "Witte Clove. Two more steps and you would have broken your neck down there."
Sometime after this encounter, Meg describes Reade as "gruff." But a gruff person would see her about to step over the cliff and say, "Stop, cliff behind you!" (Actually, in this situation, I think even a chatterbox would get to the point faster than Sheriff Reade does.) Meg also later mentions that her first few encounters with Reade haven't gone so well. But so far, they've acted like two typical, stressed-out people whose goals didn't quite mesh at the time. Nothing suggests animosity or even serious tension.
This example is illustrative of the entire book. Meg says things about the people around her that don't mesh with what we see. Toward the end of the book, she realizes that her daughter is "struggling" with the loss of her father and that "a great deal of her anger toward [Meg] is displaced anger toward [him]." I had read the entire book without any sense of deep anger from Sally. I'd thought she was just being a normal, stretching-for-independence teenager. And the dialogue throughout is as dense as the example above, even more so when the characters soliloquize on the school's past and their family histories and whatever other information Meg needs at the moment to clue her in to the mystery.
With so much interspersed exposition, the plot's pacing barely rivals an inchworm's; but in terms of believability, it almost worked for me until the last 50 pages or so. And by the time Meg had poured out to Sally all the explanations of who was whose mother and grandmother, I was no longer trying to keep track of the convoluted genealogies; I simply didn't care.
Some reviews suggest that Ms. Goodman's other works are better, but I can't find enough spark in this one to read her again. I never cared about the outcome for Meg or her daughter or anyone else. The romance between Meg and Sheriff Reade was cliched and dull (and I had to laugh when their morning-after conversation consisted of yet more rumination on the school's history). I read to love characters, to worry about them and cheer for them. I was never able to do that in the time I spent at Arcadia Falls.
The author's characters consist of cardboard. The voices in dialogue are interchangeable, as are Lily's diary voice and Meg's narrative voice. And speaking of the diary, it is ridiculously detailed given that it's written as a letter of confession to Lily's beloved. The intended reader would already know much of the information. (But Meg doesn't, of course, and Meg is the one who must solve the mystery.)
The author clearly wanted her characters to be more than types, but the "depth" doesn't come across because it is never shown in their actions or words. Instead, we only glimpse the fullness of what Ms. Goodman intended when Meg tells us what to think of a character. For example, Meg's first conversation with Sheriff Reade reads as follows (I'm quoting dialogue only and removing the beats/interior monologue):
Reade: "Stop right there. Don't move another inch."
Meg: "What do you mean? I haven't done anything wrong. Reade, isn't it? You're the town sheriff. I'm the new English teacher."
R: "Yes, I know you are, but I don't think you know where you are. If you'll stand still for a second..." [He holds up his lantern to show her the cliff edge at her back.] "Witte Clove. Two more steps and you would have broken your neck down there."
Sometime after this encounter, Meg describes Reade as "gruff." But a gruff person would see her about to step over the cliff and say, "Stop, cliff behind you!" (Actually, in this situation, I think even a chatterbox would get to the point faster than Sheriff Reade does.) Meg also later mentions that her first few encounters with Reade haven't gone so well. But so far, they've acted like two typical, stressed-out people whose goals didn't quite mesh at the time. Nothing suggests animosity or even serious tension.
This example is illustrative of the entire book. Meg says things about the people around her that don't mesh with what we see. Toward the end of the book, she realizes that her daughter is "struggling" with the loss of her father and that "a great deal of her anger toward [Meg] is displaced anger toward [him]." I had read the entire book without any sense of deep anger from Sally. I'd thought she was just being a normal, stretching-for-independence teenager. And the dialogue throughout is as dense as the example above, even more so when the characters soliloquize on the school's past and their family histories and whatever other information Meg needs at the moment to clue her in to the mystery.
With so much interspersed exposition, the plot's pacing barely rivals an inchworm's; but in terms of believability, it almost worked for me until the last 50 pages or so. And by the time Meg had poured out to Sally all the explanations of who was whose mother and grandmother, I was no longer trying to keep track of the convoluted genealogies; I simply didn't care.
Some reviews suggest that Ms. Goodman's other works are better, but I can't find enough spark in this one to read her again. I never cared about the outcome for Meg or her daughter or anyone else. The romance between Meg and Sheriff Reade was cliched and dull (and I had to laugh when their morning-after conversation consisted of yet more rumination on the school's history). I read to love characters, to worry about them and cheer for them. I was never able to do that in the time I spent at Arcadia Falls.
March 20, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in February 2012.
There is almost a subgenre of fiction set in remote New England boarding schools and colleges. Like thirties house parties in English stately homes, a staple setting for vintage crime fiction (as well as P.G. Wodehouse, of course), they provide a sealed community of privileged individuals which acts to intensify relationships, promote jealousy and passion, and makes more or less normal people behave in strange and bizarre fashions - as happens, for instance, in Donna Tartt's The Secret History, referenced in a review quoted on the cover of this edition of Arcadia Falls.
The specific location for this story is school focusing on art, formerly an artistic colony. It is told from the point of view of a recently widowed (and, as a result, newly poor) single mother Megan Rosenthal, who gratefully takes up a post teaching English literature at Arcadia Falls, which is accompanied by the offer of a place at the school to her daughter Sally, only to find that within a few weeks of her arrival and the start of the school year a student goes missing before her body is found at the foot of cliffs in the (extensive) school grounds. At the same time, Megan becomes fascinated by the relationship between the two women who effectively founded and then ran the school for decades with a somewhat peculiar vision (which includes participation in pagan rituals to mark the seasons by the pupils).
A "finding oneself" theme is very important in Arcadia Falls, exemplified by a children's story, The Changeling Girl, written by one of the school's founders which is told, retold, reflected and commented on throughout the novel in ironic fashion, as characters both act it out and talk about it - adopted children discovering or seeking the identities of their parents, for example, as well as Megan trying to build a new life for herself and Sally after the death of her husband. Another theme is the way that the decisions made in one generation affect the next, with several mothers giving up careers to raise children, or giving up a baby for adoption, with repercussions for both the parents and the children. Sometimes the treatment is a little mawkish, but generally these themes serve to unify the disparate elements of the story and even provide something of a moral, if the reader feels that such a thing is necessary.
Though the setting with its Gothic touches and the themes of Arcadia Falls are hardly original, it is a well written and entertaining novel on the boundary between literary fiction, crime fiction, and fantasy, the last being more suggested than the other two genres. It is the depiction of character and the touches of atmosphere which make the story worth reading. It reminded me of the novels of Mary Stewart, particularly the later ones.
There is almost a subgenre of fiction set in remote New England boarding schools and colleges. Like thirties house parties in English stately homes, a staple setting for vintage crime fiction (as well as P.G. Wodehouse, of course), they provide a sealed community of privileged individuals which acts to intensify relationships, promote jealousy and passion, and makes more or less normal people behave in strange and bizarre fashions - as happens, for instance, in Donna Tartt's The Secret History, referenced in a review quoted on the cover of this edition of Arcadia Falls.
The specific location for this story is school focusing on art, formerly an artistic colony. It is told from the point of view of a recently widowed (and, as a result, newly poor) single mother Megan Rosenthal, who gratefully takes up a post teaching English literature at Arcadia Falls, which is accompanied by the offer of a place at the school to her daughter Sally, only to find that within a few weeks of her arrival and the start of the school year a student goes missing before her body is found at the foot of cliffs in the (extensive) school grounds. At the same time, Megan becomes fascinated by the relationship between the two women who effectively founded and then ran the school for decades with a somewhat peculiar vision (which includes participation in pagan rituals to mark the seasons by the pupils).
A "finding oneself" theme is very important in Arcadia Falls, exemplified by a children's story, The Changeling Girl, written by one of the school's founders which is told, retold, reflected and commented on throughout the novel in ironic fashion, as characters both act it out and talk about it - adopted children discovering or seeking the identities of their parents, for example, as well as Megan trying to build a new life for herself and Sally after the death of her husband. Another theme is the way that the decisions made in one generation affect the next, with several mothers giving up careers to raise children, or giving up a baby for adoption, with repercussions for both the parents and the children. Sometimes the treatment is a little mawkish, but generally these themes serve to unify the disparate elements of the story and even provide something of a moral, if the reader feels that such a thing is necessary.
Though the setting with its Gothic touches and the themes of Arcadia Falls are hardly original, it is a well written and entertaining novel on the boundary between literary fiction, crime fiction, and fantasy, the last being more suggested than the other two genres. It is the depiction of character and the touches of atmosphere which make the story worth reading. It reminded me of the novels of Mary Stewart, particularly the later ones.
September 18, 2010
Carol Goodman is known for her gothic, fictional portraits of academia. Her latest release, Arcadia Falls, is no exception. The novel begins as Meg Rosenthal and her daughter Sally travel from their over-sized, suburban home in Great Neck, New York, to the small upstate town of Arcadia. Meg lost her husband Jude last year, and neither she nor Sally has yet dealt with their grief. The two move so that Meg can take a teaching job at a private fine arts boarding school just outside of town called Arcadia Falls. Meg has been working on her doctoral thesis, which examines the literature and artwork of the school's founders, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt. Vera and Lily wrote and illustrated now-out-of-print children's books, particularly fairy tales --the primary focus of Meg's research.
The mother-daughter pair enters the grounds of Arcadia Falls with an already strained relationship; Sally spends most of her time with ear buds inserted and iPod on. Their move from suburban mall-topia to middle-of-nowhere upstate New York does little to mend their bond. Meg hopes she and Sally can find some common ground, and that Sally will renew her interest in drawing. Sally soon takes up with a small circle of friends at the school, but rather than bringing her closer to her mother, it seems to have the opposite affect. She requests a move into a free spot in the dorms with her friends, and Meg feels unable to deny her this opportunity to fit in.
Soon after the Rosenthals move to Arcadia, Meg begins to sense something sinister shrouding the school grounds. Goodman employs descriptive writing to effectively create an atmosphere that is rich with foreboding. As the novel progresses, the reader has an increasingly heightened sense of suspense. While the novel illustrates many traits of an old-fashioned thriller/ mystery, Goodman includes a great deal of art- and literature-related references that push Arcadia Falls to a higher level than most books in the mystery genre. What results is an intelligently written, sufficiently creepy novel with plot twists and turns that keep the reader guessing how things will be resolved.
Another effective method Goodman uses in Arcadia Falls is the novel-within-a-novel technique. She includes within the text a private journal of Lily Eberhardt's in its entirety, as well as one of the fairy tales Lily and Vera Beecher published. Both the journal entries and the story "The Changeling" provide subplots, but also add to the larger story. Meg's research requires her to find any and all resources of information about the two artists, but their story becomes intertwined with the current residents of Arcadia Falls, as well. "The Changeling" not only provides clues about the school and founders' history, but is also presented within the novel as a beloved family fairy tale for Meg as a young girl, and later for Sally.
The mother-daughter pair enters the grounds of Arcadia Falls with an already strained relationship; Sally spends most of her time with ear buds inserted and iPod on. Their move from suburban mall-topia to middle-of-nowhere upstate New York does little to mend their bond. Meg hopes she and Sally can find some common ground, and that Sally will renew her interest in drawing. Sally soon takes up with a small circle of friends at the school, but rather than bringing her closer to her mother, it seems to have the opposite affect. She requests a move into a free spot in the dorms with her friends, and Meg feels unable to deny her this opportunity to fit in.
Soon after the Rosenthals move to Arcadia, Meg begins to sense something sinister shrouding the school grounds. Goodman employs descriptive writing to effectively create an atmosphere that is rich with foreboding. As the novel progresses, the reader has an increasingly heightened sense of suspense. While the novel illustrates many traits of an old-fashioned thriller/ mystery, Goodman includes a great deal of art- and literature-related references that push Arcadia Falls to a higher level than most books in the mystery genre. What results is an intelligently written, sufficiently creepy novel with plot twists and turns that keep the reader guessing how things will be resolved.
Another effective method Goodman uses in Arcadia Falls is the novel-within-a-novel technique. She includes within the text a private journal of Lily Eberhardt's in its entirety, as well as one of the fairy tales Lily and Vera Beecher published. Both the journal entries and the story "The Changeling" provide subplots, but also add to the larger story. Meg's research requires her to find any and all resources of information about the two artists, but their story becomes intertwined with the current residents of Arcadia Falls, as well. "The Changeling" not only provides clues about the school and founders' history, but is also presented within the novel as a beloved family fairy tale for Meg as a young girl, and later for Sally.
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