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Ghostwalk
In 2002, a Cambridge historian is found dead, floating down the river Cam, a glass prism in her hand, after researching a book about a series of suspicious circumstances surrounding Newton's appointment as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1667. That year, two Fellows died by falling down staircases, apparently drunk; another died in a field, apparently drunk; and a fourth was expelled, having gone mad–leaving vacancies for new appointments and paving the way for Newton’s extraordinary scientific discoveries. When Lydia Brooke, at the request of her ex-lover, the historian’s son, steps in to finish the book, strange shows of light begin to play on the walls, and papers disappear only to reappear elsewhere. And when events escalate to murder, and Lydia’s rekindled romance appears increasingly implicated in the danger, the present becomes entangled with the seventeenth century, with Isaac Newton at the center of the mystery.
Filled with evocative descriptions of Cambridge, past and present, of seventeenth-century glassmaking, alchemy, the Great Plague, and Newton’s scientific innovations, Ghostwalk centers on a real historical mystery that Rebecca Stott has uncovered, involving Newton’s alchemy. A riveting literary thriller, Ghostwalk is a rare debut that will change the way most of us think about scientific innovation, our perception of time, and the force of history.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published May 8, 2007
117 people are currently reading
2934 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Stott
22 books255 followersRebecca Stott was born in Cambridge in 1964 and raised in Brighton in a large Plymouth Brethren community. She studied English and Art History at York University and then completed an MA and PhD whilst raising her son, Jacob, born in 1984.
She is the author of several academic books on Victorian literature and culture, two books of non-fiction, including a partial biography of Charles Darwin, and a cultural history of the oyster. She is now a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has three children, Jacob, Hannah and Kezia and has lived in Cambridge since 1993. She has made several radio programmes for Radio Four.
Her first novel, Ghostwalk, is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in the UK, is the launch novel of the new fiction list of Spiegel and Grau in the US (a new division of Random House) and is being translated into 12 different languages including Russian and Chinese.
She is writing her next novel, The Coral Thief.
She is the author of several academic books on Victorian literature and culture, two books of non-fiction, including a partial biography of Charles Darwin, and a cultural history of the oyster. She is now a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has three children, Jacob, Hannah and Kezia and has lived in Cambridge since 1993. She has made several radio programmes for Radio Four.
Her first novel, Ghostwalk, is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in the UK, is the launch novel of the new fiction list of Spiegel and Grau in the US (a new division of Random House) and is being translated into 12 different languages including Russian and Chinese.
She is writing her next novel, The Coral Thief.
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October 8, 2015
Well, that was different.
In theory, this book should have been my jam. The story opens with Elizabeth Vogelsang being found dead in a river near her Cambridge home, clutching a glass prism in her hand. Elizabeth is a 17th-century scholar who specializes in Isaac Newton, and her death interrupts her work on a book exploring Newton's interest in alchemy. Elizabeth's son, Cameron, recruits Lydia Brooke (a writer, friend of Elizabeth, and Cameron's former lover) to ghost-write the rest of Elizabeth's book. Along the way, Lydia tries to unravel the secrets in Elizabeth's research - secrets that might have led to her death.
I'm going to go ahead and get the most absurd thing about this book out of the way first, so we can acknowledge it and move on. Okay, so you want to know who killed Elizabeth, right? The book is set up like a murder mystery/historic fiction/supernatural mashup, so you know the solution to the murder is going to be good. Ready?
A ghost did it. The murderer is literally a ghost.
Don't worry, we'll get back to that. I just wanted to give everyone a vague idea of where this crazy train is headed, because that's more than Rebecca Stott did for me.
(quick note: I purchased this book secondhand; however, it's still an ARC, so all quoted passages may be different in the final published version)
I started to sense that something was wrong by the first chapter. After a prologue where we see Elizabeth's body being found by her son, Chapter One begins from Lydia's perspective. She describes the days after Elizabeth's death, and then suddenly we're in a police interrogation room, and Lydia's narration informs us that "Elizabeth Vogelsang drowned in September, 2002, the first of three deaths that would become the subject of a police investigation four months later."
Okay, let's take a minute to sort that out, because there's a lot of information there. So the book isn't going to focus just on Elizabeth's death, but also two other people. Presumably we will meet these people at some point in the narrative and grow to care about them, and their deaths will be appropriately placed in the narrative to maintain suspense (yes to the first, sort of to the second, nope to the third). Also, since the police investigation happens four months after Elizabeth's death, we've got a relatively short time frame to work with. And Lydia will be very close to these deaths. Okay, cool.
But then, only a few paragraphs later, Stott drops this on us: "...I would have to be careful and alert here at the Parkside Police Station. Very alert. They had arrested Lily Ridler."
That line comes seven pages into the novel. It is the first time that Lily Ridler is mentioned, and it will be way, way too long before she's mentioned again (in fact, until I flipped back to the beginning of the book to look for quotes, I had completely forgotten that they mention this character by name so early). By the time we figure out who this character is and why we should care, I had already stopped caring.
Suspense novels are tricky, because you have to keep your audience invested without showing too many of your cards at once. Rebecca Stottt has the entire story of Ghostwalk mapped out in her head already, but she forgets that her reader doesn't. She goes so overboard with the exposition and the "but little did I know..." foreshadowing that the reader gets overwhelmed, and can't figure out what they should be paying attention to for later. Lydia keeps giving us these descriptions from the police station and the courtroom, but it's so disconnected from everything else that's happening in the story that by the time I had put together all the important details from the investigation, I no longer cared. Stott thinks she's prolonging the tension, but by so insistently teasing the ending, all she's doing is frustrating the reader and distracting from the real-time events in the story.
If I had to pinpoint the central issue in this book, it's that Stott is trying to do too many things at once. There's the murder mystery, and then there's a pretty heavy supernatural element - I think Stott was going for a Gothic ghost story kind of thing, but the first instance of it is clumsy and jarring: Lydia goes to Elizabeth's funeral and meets a woman with one blind eye who says things like "Oh, but [Elizabeth] is still here. I haven't seen her yet, but she's here all right. The others are here too. Don't you feel them?" Maybe it was my fault, for not knowing what kind of book this was going to be when I started, but I could never get into the Gothic mindset that Stott is trying so hard to create. I can't really put my finger on why the supernatural element didn't work for me - it was either taken too seriously, or not seriously enough. On the one hand, if you're going to write a book about a ghost who murders people, why not have some fun with it? Indulge in the overblown melodramatic creepiness of your story and go for gold, like The Shadow of the Wind. At the same time, no one in the book seems at all bothered by the fact that they're clearly being haunted. Lydia, who is staying in Elizabeth's house while she finishes her book, notices weird light patterns, like reflecting water, on the walls of the house. And one morning, after spending the night with her on-again boyfriend Cameron (we'll get there, don't worry), she wakes up and sees that he has blood all over his face. And both of their reactions don't go any farther than "Huh, that's weird." And later, after Lydia washes the pillowcase, the bloodstain comes back. She burns the pillowcase, but there's no other discernable reaction, as if shit like this happens all the time in this universe and it's not something to get worked up over. The characters, most of whom are scientists and scholars, accept the reality of psychics and ghosts with no reservation whatsoever, and I was not having it.
Maybe I would have been more receptive to the Ghost Murderers From History angle if it were the main plotline in the book, but alas, the ghost murders have to fight for space alongside another plotline that is somehow even more ridiculous. Ready?
Okay, so Cameron (mother of Elizabeth, recall) is a scientist at a pharmaceutical company. The company tests on animals, and there's a radical animal rights group that is so radical they attack another scientist, and also have a habit of murdering scientists' pets.
QUICK BREAK FOR AN ANGRY TANGENT: Yeah, the animal rights group steals people's pets and kills them. I thought Stott was letting me off easy when Cameron tells Lydia that his daughters' pet guinea pigs were killed, so his wife is taking the girls out of Cambridge to get away from things. That's fine, I thought - we've established that this activist group is dangerous, and it also gets Cameron's family out of the picture so he and Lydia can bang. But I had forgotten, dear reader, that Elizabeth also has a cat. A cat that Lydia is now responsible for. Guess what shows up dead on her doorstep one day? Guess what injuries get described in detail? Guess who spends a hefty amount of text speculating on the cat's terrifying last moments?
It was gratuitous and unnecessary, and I kind of hate Rebecca Stott for making me read it. I am not the sort of person to put trigger warnings on things, but I would warn anyone planning to read this book that the cat's death is detailed, upsetting, and utterly pointless.
Anyway, back to the plot overload: We've got the animal activists, and at the end of the book, we find out that there's this shady government group called, I shit you not, the Syndicate, and they are actually the ones who created the activist group, to discredit the real activists. And guess who's in charge of this evil corporation? Cameron, obviously!
Hey, remember how the ghost of a 17th century alchemist murdered someone in the 21st century? What does that have to do with creepy government agencies? Absolutely fucking nothing, but someone let Rebecca Stott believe that trying to cram these two huge plotlines into one novel was a good idea. I have a feeling that the Syndicate was a later addition, after some well-intentioned idiot was like, "Hey, Rebecca, I think you need to up the stakes in this story. Have you read The Da Vinci Code? Well..."
I didn't even get a chance to mention that whenever Lydia's narration mentions Cameron, she refers to him as "you." Like the whole book is a really long letter Lydia is writing to him. It's horrible and utterly pointless and I don't know why no one caught it before letting this book be published.
That, and the dialogue. Here's a sample conversation between Lydia and Will, Elizabeth's former research assistant (it is important to know that at this point in the book, there has been absolutely no hint that the Syndicate will be a plotline, so this conversation was absolute fucking gibberish to me when I first read it):
"'Look,' [Will] said. 'I'm going to have to go away for a while. I came to say goodbye.'
'You'll be back?'
'Oh yes, I hope so. Depends on what happens over the next few weeks.'
'How long?'
'Could be a week or a month. Probably not any longer. And I've arranged for someone to keep an eye out for you.'
'An eye on me? Why?'
'Because you're caught up in something complicated and it might be dangerous. I can't explain because I'm not allowed to and because I can't just give you bits - I'd have to explain it all.'
'To do with Elizabeth's manuscript?'
'No, absolutely nothing to do with all of that. Something very un-seventeenth century. Now go to bed and don't think about it. I'll be back as soon as I can.'"
For fuck's sake, human beings don't talk like that. The only people who talk like that are characters in a bad novel written by an author who doesn't know how to create genuine suspense!
Utter fiasco. If you're looking for a creepy October read, this is not it.
In theory, this book should have been my jam. The story opens with Elizabeth Vogelsang being found dead in a river near her Cambridge home, clutching a glass prism in her hand. Elizabeth is a 17th-century scholar who specializes in Isaac Newton, and her death interrupts her work on a book exploring Newton's interest in alchemy. Elizabeth's son, Cameron, recruits Lydia Brooke (a writer, friend of Elizabeth, and Cameron's former lover) to ghost-write the rest of Elizabeth's book. Along the way, Lydia tries to unravel the secrets in Elizabeth's research - secrets that might have led to her death.
I'm going to go ahead and get the most absurd thing about this book out of the way first, so we can acknowledge it and move on. Okay, so you want to know who killed Elizabeth, right? The book is set up like a murder mystery/historic fiction/supernatural mashup, so you know the solution to the murder is going to be good. Ready?
A ghost did it. The murderer is literally a ghost.
Don't worry, we'll get back to that. I just wanted to give everyone a vague idea of where this crazy train is headed, because that's more than Rebecca Stott did for me.
(quick note: I purchased this book secondhand; however, it's still an ARC, so all quoted passages may be different in the final published version)
I started to sense that something was wrong by the first chapter. After a prologue where we see Elizabeth's body being found by her son, Chapter One begins from Lydia's perspective. She describes the days after Elizabeth's death, and then suddenly we're in a police interrogation room, and Lydia's narration informs us that "Elizabeth Vogelsang drowned in September, 2002, the first of three deaths that would become the subject of a police investigation four months later."
Okay, let's take a minute to sort that out, because there's a lot of information there. So the book isn't going to focus just on Elizabeth's death, but also two other people. Presumably we will meet these people at some point in the narrative and grow to care about them, and their deaths will be appropriately placed in the narrative to maintain suspense (yes to the first, sort of to the second, nope to the third). Also, since the police investigation happens four months after Elizabeth's death, we've got a relatively short time frame to work with. And Lydia will be very close to these deaths. Okay, cool.
But then, only a few paragraphs later, Stott drops this on us: "...I would have to be careful and alert here at the Parkside Police Station. Very alert. They had arrested Lily Ridler."
That line comes seven pages into the novel. It is the first time that Lily Ridler is mentioned, and it will be way, way too long before she's mentioned again (in fact, until I flipped back to the beginning of the book to look for quotes, I had completely forgotten that they mention this character by name so early). By the time we figure out who this character is and why we should care, I had already stopped caring.
Suspense novels are tricky, because you have to keep your audience invested without showing too many of your cards at once. Rebecca Stottt has the entire story of Ghostwalk mapped out in her head already, but she forgets that her reader doesn't. She goes so overboard with the exposition and the "but little did I know..." foreshadowing that the reader gets overwhelmed, and can't figure out what they should be paying attention to for later. Lydia keeps giving us these descriptions from the police station and the courtroom, but it's so disconnected from everything else that's happening in the story that by the time I had put together all the important details from the investigation, I no longer cared. Stott thinks she's prolonging the tension, but by so insistently teasing the ending, all she's doing is frustrating the reader and distracting from the real-time events in the story.
If I had to pinpoint the central issue in this book, it's that Stott is trying to do too many things at once. There's the murder mystery, and then there's a pretty heavy supernatural element - I think Stott was going for a Gothic ghost story kind of thing, but the first instance of it is clumsy and jarring: Lydia goes to Elizabeth's funeral and meets a woman with one blind eye who says things like "Oh, but [Elizabeth] is still here. I haven't seen her yet, but she's here all right. The others are here too. Don't you feel them?" Maybe it was my fault, for not knowing what kind of book this was going to be when I started, but I could never get into the Gothic mindset that Stott is trying so hard to create. I can't really put my finger on why the supernatural element didn't work for me - it was either taken too seriously, or not seriously enough. On the one hand, if you're going to write a book about a ghost who murders people, why not have some fun with it? Indulge in the overblown melodramatic creepiness of your story and go for gold, like The Shadow of the Wind. At the same time, no one in the book seems at all bothered by the fact that they're clearly being haunted. Lydia, who is staying in Elizabeth's house while she finishes her book, notices weird light patterns, like reflecting water, on the walls of the house. And one morning, after spending the night with her on-again boyfriend Cameron (we'll get there, don't worry), she wakes up and sees that he has blood all over his face. And both of their reactions don't go any farther than "Huh, that's weird." And later, after Lydia washes the pillowcase, the bloodstain comes back. She burns the pillowcase, but there's no other discernable reaction, as if shit like this happens all the time in this universe and it's not something to get worked up over. The characters, most of whom are scientists and scholars, accept the reality of psychics and ghosts with no reservation whatsoever, and I was not having it.
Maybe I would have been more receptive to the Ghost Murderers From History angle if it were the main plotline in the book, but alas, the ghost murders have to fight for space alongside another plotline that is somehow even more ridiculous. Ready?
Okay, so Cameron (mother of Elizabeth, recall) is a scientist at a pharmaceutical company. The company tests on animals, and there's a radical animal rights group that is so radical they attack another scientist, and also have a habit of murdering scientists' pets.
QUICK BREAK FOR AN ANGRY TANGENT: Yeah, the animal rights group steals people's pets and kills them. I thought Stott was letting me off easy when Cameron tells Lydia that his daughters' pet guinea pigs were killed, so his wife is taking the girls out of Cambridge to get away from things. That's fine, I thought - we've established that this activist group is dangerous, and it also gets Cameron's family out of the picture so he and Lydia can bang. But I had forgotten, dear reader, that Elizabeth also has a cat. A cat that Lydia is now responsible for. Guess what shows up dead on her doorstep one day? Guess what injuries get described in detail? Guess who spends a hefty amount of text speculating on the cat's terrifying last moments?
It was gratuitous and unnecessary, and I kind of hate Rebecca Stott for making me read it. I am not the sort of person to put trigger warnings on things, but I would warn anyone planning to read this book that the cat's death is detailed, upsetting, and utterly pointless.
Anyway, back to the plot overload: We've got the animal activists, and at the end of the book, we find out that there's this shady government group called, I shit you not, the Syndicate, and they are actually the ones who created the activist group, to discredit the real activists. And guess who's in charge of this evil corporation? Cameron, obviously!
Hey, remember how the ghost of a 17th century alchemist murdered someone in the 21st century? What does that have to do with creepy government agencies? Absolutely fucking nothing, but someone let Rebecca Stott believe that trying to cram these two huge plotlines into one novel was a good idea. I have a feeling that the Syndicate was a later addition, after some well-intentioned idiot was like, "Hey, Rebecca, I think you need to up the stakes in this story. Have you read The Da Vinci Code? Well..."
I didn't even get a chance to mention that whenever Lydia's narration mentions Cameron, she refers to him as "you." Like the whole book is a really long letter Lydia is writing to him. It's horrible and utterly pointless and I don't know why no one caught it before letting this book be published.
That, and the dialogue. Here's a sample conversation between Lydia and Will, Elizabeth's former research assistant (it is important to know that at this point in the book, there has been absolutely no hint that the Syndicate will be a plotline, so this conversation was absolute fucking gibberish to me when I first read it):
"'Look,' [Will] said. 'I'm going to have to go away for a while. I came to say goodbye.'
'You'll be back?'
'Oh yes, I hope so. Depends on what happens over the next few weeks.'
'How long?'
'Could be a week or a month. Probably not any longer. And I've arranged for someone to keep an eye out for you.'
'An eye on me? Why?'
'Because you're caught up in something complicated and it might be dangerous. I can't explain because I'm not allowed to and because I can't just give you bits - I'd have to explain it all.'
'To do with Elizabeth's manuscript?'
'No, absolutely nothing to do with all of that. Something very un-seventeenth century. Now go to bed and don't think about it. I'll be back as soon as I can.'"
For fuck's sake, human beings don't talk like that. The only people who talk like that are characters in a bad novel written by an author who doesn't know how to create genuine suspense!
Utter fiasco. If you're looking for a creepy October read, this is not it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2007
I've seen some reviews of Rebecca Stott's Ghostwalk compare it to The DaVinci Code, but it's an extremely superficial comparison. Books about modern-day people who investigate mysteries from the past existed long before Dan Brown hammered out his infamous novel; he did not create a new genre.
In Ghostwalk, Lydia Brooke is asked by her ex-lover to ghostwrite the final chapters of an Isaac Newton biography that his late mother was writing. As she completes the work, Lydia finds the seventeenth century creeping into the present as mysterious deaths mirror the deaths of Newton's contemporaries.
It's not exactly a murder mystery; Ghostwalk focuses more on Lydia's own entanglements with her ex-lover and his dead mother than it does on the victims. The narration is lyrical; the entire novel is Lydia speaking to her ex-lover, referring to him in the second person. The result is dark, moody, and dreamy. There are also chunks of the Newton biography included, providing interesting details about the scientist's life.
Many other reviews mark it down for requiring a suspension of disbelief, but they seem to miss the point that this is a ghost story (did they not read the title?). I really enjoyed how subtly the two eras collide, and things were just creepy enough without being sensational. Ghostwalk is one of those impressive debut novels that makes one look forward to the author's next book.
In Ghostwalk, Lydia Brooke is asked by her ex-lover to ghostwrite the final chapters of an Isaac Newton biography that his late mother was writing. As she completes the work, Lydia finds the seventeenth century creeping into the present as mysterious deaths mirror the deaths of Newton's contemporaries.
It's not exactly a murder mystery; Ghostwalk focuses more on Lydia's own entanglements with her ex-lover and his dead mother than it does on the victims. The narration is lyrical; the entire novel is Lydia speaking to her ex-lover, referring to him in the second person. The result is dark, moody, and dreamy. There are also chunks of the Newton biography included, providing interesting details about the scientist's life.
Many other reviews mark it down for requiring a suspension of disbelief, but they seem to miss the point that this is a ghost story (did they not read the title?). I really enjoyed how subtly the two eras collide, and things were just creepy enough without being sensational. Ghostwalk is one of those impressive debut novels that makes one look forward to the author's next book.
July 12, 2008
After reading this book, I am sorry to say that I was severely disappointed. The synopsis for it sounded great, and I normally love books that involve a historical mystery to solve, but there really wasn't much about this book that I liked. A historian and writer of screenplays, Lydia Brooke, is hired by her former married lover, Cameron Brown, to ghostwrite a book, after the author - his mother- Elizabeth Volgelsang, is murdered. The unfinished manuscript involves Isaac Newton and a group of seventeenth century alchemists, and Elizabeth's notes and manuscript show that she believes that a series of seventeenth century deaths are entangled with current happenings. While working on his mother's book, Lydia becomes involved with Cameron Brown again, and she quickly becomes aware that he is caught up in a dangerous situation with animal rights activists groups because of his work in a pharmaceutical lab. As mysterious and dangerous events start to unfold, Lydia isn't certain whether they are a result of a connection with the seventeenth century alchemists or Cameron's work.
This sounded like and could have been a really great book - but it just wasn't. I thought it started off really slow, and it took half of the book for me to become interested. After I finally did become engrossed in the book, I didn't like anything that happened. Other than that, the characters were not particularly likeable. The main character, Lydia Brooke, came across to me as a very weak individual. She had been in a go nowhere relationship with a married man for many years, but finally left him. It doesn't take more than seeing him once before she is renewing her relationship with him. Even when she finds out that he is heavily involved in a very disturbing organization, she has trouble deciding what to do or to think about him. As for her lover, Cameron, he came across as very selfish and self-absorbed. He had a wife and children, yet had a long term affair with Lydia. After Lydia left, he had at least one other affair. Lydia catches him in lies continuously, and often hears him lie to his wife on the phone. Cameron was also apparently heavily involved in an organization that instigated horrific acts. Even disliking Cameron, I hated what happened to him.
Most of the book was told in the first person in the form of a letter from Lydia to Cameron, but there were parts that were supposed to be the chapters of Elizabeth's book. Her book was nonfiction, and those parts just didn't seem to fit well in a fiction novel. These book inside of a book excerpts were hard to read because they were too long and not particularly interesting. I believe that this book had great potential, but it wasn't realized and fell flat.
This sounded like and could have been a really great book - but it just wasn't. I thought it started off really slow, and it took half of the book for me to become interested. After I finally did become engrossed in the book, I didn't like anything that happened. Other than that, the characters were not particularly likeable. The main character, Lydia Brooke, came across to me as a very weak individual. She had been in a go nowhere relationship with a married man for many years, but finally left him. It doesn't take more than seeing him once before she is renewing her relationship with him. Even when she finds out that he is heavily involved in a very disturbing organization, she has trouble deciding what to do or to think about him. As for her lover, Cameron, he came across as very selfish and self-absorbed. He had a wife and children, yet had a long term affair with Lydia. After Lydia left, he had at least one other affair. Lydia catches him in lies continuously, and often hears him lie to his wife on the phone. Cameron was also apparently heavily involved in an organization that instigated horrific acts. Even disliking Cameron, I hated what happened to him.
Most of the book was told in the first person in the form of a letter from Lydia to Cameron, but there were parts that were supposed to be the chapters of Elizabeth's book. Her book was nonfiction, and those parts just didn't seem to fit well in a fiction novel. These book inside of a book excerpts were hard to read because they were too long and not particularly interesting. I believe that this book had great potential, but it wasn't realized and fell flat.
November 9, 2009
It's not often that I think a NYT book reviewer gets it totally wrong, but that's the case with Rebecca Stott's novel, Ghostwalk. I should have been tipped off by the trite final sentence of the review: "[Stott's:] home terrain, however, is the river-riven landscape of the human heart." What does the river stand for in this sentence? Besides, "river" and "riven" have the exact same etymology. Pure blather.
But enough nit-picking on the review. The novel takes place in contemporary Cambridge, where Lydia Brooke's intermittent lover, a controversial neuroscientist, asks her to finish his mother's book after she mysteriously drowns in the river. The book is a study of Newton's alchemy that purports to explain how he resorted crime to attain a fellowship in his college. (Yes, this is kind of a spoiler, but you'd figure this out quickly on your own.) Meanwhile, an animal rights group is launching terrorist attacks against the neuroscientist and his associates, and ghosts are trying to communicate with Lydia about events in the 17th century.
This book wants to be Foucault's Pendulum but it lacks both the detail and the range. In the end, it's not about alchemy, or neuroscience, or even ghosts; it seems to be about the very thinly argued case against Newton and Lydia's affair. The review lauds "scholarly authority" (!!!) of the book, but opening it at random, we find passages like these:
If you want to read a novel about alchemists and conspiracies, read Foucault's Pendulum. If you want to read a novel about skulduggery at a seventeenth century English university, read An Instance of the Fingerpost. If you want to read a novel about neuroscience, I recall having enjoying Galatea 2.0, but that was a long time ago so don't quote me on it. If, however, you enjoy ghost stories, reports on English gardens and weather, and descriptions of lovahs contemplating each other over the course of their daily lives, go ahead and read Ghostwalk.
But enough nit-picking on the review. The novel takes place in contemporary Cambridge, where Lydia Brooke's intermittent lover, a controversial neuroscientist, asks her to finish his mother's book after she mysteriously drowns in the river. The book is a study of Newton's alchemy that purports to explain how he resorted crime to attain a fellowship in his college. (Yes, this is kind of a spoiler, but you'd figure this out quickly on your own.) Meanwhile, an animal rights group is launching terrorist attacks against the neuroscientist and his associates, and ghosts are trying to communicate with Lydia about events in the 17th century.
This book wants to be Foucault's Pendulum but it lacks both the detail and the range. In the end, it's not about alchemy, or neuroscience, or even ghosts; it seems to be about the very thinly argued case against Newton and Lydia's affair. The review lauds "scholarly authority" (!!!) of the book, but opening it at random, we find passages like these:
How long did we sit there, Dilys and I? I watched the shadows lengthen across her garden, a blackening shadow theatre across the vibrant emerald of her lawn. I watched the honeysuckle tendrils blow in the wind, the soft rain, the late flies, a crow. I was nowhere and somewhere. Lost between a river and the Fens, between the seventeenth century and the twenty-first, between scepticism and belief. (pg. 170) ... That night, Cameron Brown, I began to feel a new kind of power. I touched the back of your neck with my eyes from your mother's bedroom window, through the rain, and made you turn towards me. I watched you turn briefly towards the house, glance up at the upper windows, follow the line of the roof there. But you couldn't see me up in Elizabeth's bedroom in the dark, so you turned back towards the river. (pg. 205)This gauzy musing is constant; Lydia even fantasizes about her lover presenting a PowerPoint at a conference. As for Newton, we get scenes here and there excerpted from the book Lydia's working on, but it's a very small part of this novel and likely to be a disappointment to anyone with experience of, say, A.S. Byatt's burst-fullgrown-from-the-skull-of-Zeus inventions.
If you want to read a novel about alchemists and conspiracies, read Foucault's Pendulum. If you want to read a novel about skulduggery at a seventeenth century English university, read An Instance of the Fingerpost. If you want to read a novel about neuroscience, I recall having enjoying Galatea 2.0, but that was a long time ago so don't quote me on it. If, however, you enjoy ghost stories, reports on English gardens and weather, and descriptions of lovahs contemplating each other over the course of their daily lives, go ahead and read Ghostwalk.
October 27, 2017
One of my "ghostly" reads for October, Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott was enjoyable. It is uniquely written, a story within a story; unfortunately, the inside story involves Sir Isaac Newton, the great scientific discoverer. I do not have a scientific heart. Sorry.
There is a love story (an affair with a married man, if that is a love story), suspicious deaths, scientific use of animals, a mystic/seer, and many references to physics which I didn't understand. The basic plot was good with surprises, twists, and much, much, much historical atmosphere.
I can understand why it disappointed many readers, but I stayed drawn in and focused throughout. I've certainly read worse!
There is a love story (an affair with a married man, if that is a love story), suspicious deaths, scientific use of animals, a mystic/seer, and many references to physics which I didn't understand. The basic plot was good with surprises, twists, and much, much, much historical atmosphere.
I can understand why it disappointed many readers, but I stayed drawn in and focused throughout. I've certainly read worse!
September 4, 2017
I expected a fascinating ghost story, literary, with mysterious murders, and the past coming back to haunt. Intelligent and historical, yes. And it’s full of atmospheric descriptions that I liked. However, the main character Lydia Brooke, speaking in the first person point of view (“I’ve been back four times,” I said.) but then “telling” the other main character, Cameron (her ex-lover), what he said, presenting his dialogue by using the pronoun ‘you’ to name the speaker. So instead of ‘he said’ or ‘Cameron said,’ the author writes “you said” meaning you, Cameron, said it. This device was not only distracting but a really screwy way to write. I got so annoyed after a while with Lydia telling Cameron (and the reader) what he said. And then somewhere around page 230 we have Lydia in third person point of view (“Lydia Brooke walked into the dark … her head ached …that’s when she first heard the footsteps…”). The story became muddy and unclear, too much of Lydia’s romantic musings—although some of it pretty prose. The plot was way too convoluted for me and I grew bored. I might try this author again but this story didn’t make it for me.
October 5, 2008
THis is the best book that I have ever read that I could only rate two stars.
I loved Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and I couldn't wait to pick up another book that might take a deeper look into Isaac Newton's alchemical experiments. The research that was done before this book was written is incredible, and the passages in which Elizabeth Vogelsang's The Alchemist (the fictitious biography of Newton at the center of Ghostwalk) is excerpted are very good. We learn about glass making in seventeenth century Europe, the plague in England, the vast networks of alchemists operating in Europe at the time. One of the major themes of the novel is that the past 'bleeds' into the present, but the author can't seem to get her many plot devices set in the present to 'bleed' into one another, making the novel as a whole fractured and nearly incomprehesible. In the end, the author had to through in some secret shadow empire of pharmaceutical companies and arms dealers into the mix - a device that was not necessary to the plot of the novel (or perhaps was thrown in because she couldn't find an end) and didn't add anything, except maybe a political jab at arms dealers and pharmaceutical companies. This novel had so much promise, but it failed for its lack of cohesion, the lack of empathy engendered in the reader for the characters, and the waste of all of that great historical conspiracy in favor of modern ones.
I loved Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and I couldn't wait to pick up another book that might take a deeper look into Isaac Newton's alchemical experiments. The research that was done before this book was written is incredible, and the passages in which Elizabeth Vogelsang's The Alchemist (the fictitious biography of Newton at the center of Ghostwalk) is excerpted are very good. We learn about glass making in seventeenth century Europe, the plague in England, the vast networks of alchemists operating in Europe at the time. One of the major themes of the novel is that the past 'bleeds' into the present, but the author can't seem to get her many plot devices set in the present to 'bleed' into one another, making the novel as a whole fractured and nearly incomprehesible. In the end, the author had to through in some secret shadow empire of pharmaceutical companies and arms dealers into the mix - a device that was not necessary to the plot of the novel (or perhaps was thrown in because she couldn't find an end) and didn't add anything, except maybe a political jab at arms dealers and pharmaceutical companies. This novel had so much promise, but it failed for its lack of cohesion, the lack of empathy engendered in the reader for the characters, and the waste of all of that great historical conspiracy in favor of modern ones.
December 13, 2018
The research in this book is great, as well as the writing in the "book" about Isaac Newton within this story. In fact, the Newton book should have been this story. That would have made a great book with all these elements: alchemists, secret formulas, brilliant, young Newton beginning to figure out, among other things, calculus and differential equations (lovely stuff!), patronage, factions, nepotism, a series of questionable deaths..... Why did the author waste her time writing a pointless story with annoying characters in the present when she could have speculated away in all sorts of fantastic and fantastical ways about the goings in in Cambridge amongst alchemists in the 1660s?
November 19, 2016
I enjoyed the start of this book, and was intrigued by the idea of a mix between a ghost story and detective story, with 17th-century events woven in with present-day ones. I was also attracted by the fact that it's set in Cambridge, a city I know.
However, I soon got fed up and gave up after about 80 pages. I didn't believe in any of the characters and found the plot too convoluted, so decided not to waste my time!
However, I soon got fed up and gave up after about 80 pages. I didn't believe in any of the characters and found the plot too convoluted, so decided not to waste my time!
June 9, 2008
I bought this book - set in Cambridge - in Cambridge one afternoon hoping for a good ghost story, a better feel for the town (I was there only one day), and a twist on the life of Sir Isaac Newton. The book gave me very little feel for the Cambridge. It was, at best, only a passable ghost story. Some of the material on Newton was interesting, though.
The narrator, Lydia Brooke, is an intriguing character. A writer, she is hired by her former lover and prominent Cambridge neuroscientist, Cameron, to finish his mother's book on Newton as an alchemist. Unsettling things start to happen to Lydia as she tries to make sense of the book; they seem to be based on a series of deaths that took place when Newton was a student at Cambridge. But there is also a parallel story of animal rights activists threatening Cameron's work.
I enjoyed some of the author's attempts at helping the reader visualize scenes, at getting inside the mind of the narrator, and at developing relationships among characters, but there was a sense of her trying too hard. Some of the dialogue was simply silly, even though it was meant to be poetic (at least, I think it was). Do people really talk like this in Cambridge (or anywhere else for that matter? As an example, here's what Cameron says in one scene after he and Lydia have rekindled their affair: "I don't want to walk away. And you can only walk away if you promise to take all of you with you and leave not the faintest shadow behind, here in my head. You have to promise to take away all the shadows of you that drift across my skin, everywhere, all the time. And you can't promise that so you can't go. And so you will have to kiss me again, just to make sure I'm still here, and I will have to kiss you again to make sure you are still here, that neither of us are just phantoms in each other's dreams." Perhaps I don't read enough romances, but this was clearly too much.
Coupled with the fact that Cameron was a true jerk and treated Lydia like crap, I got rather sick of their relationship, especially as it took over the plot in the latter third of the book.
Perhaps the most intriguing characters were the ghost and the dead historian (Cameron's mother). I would have preferred it if they had taken center stage.
The narrator, Lydia Brooke, is an intriguing character. A writer, she is hired by her former lover and prominent Cambridge neuroscientist, Cameron, to finish his mother's book on Newton as an alchemist. Unsettling things start to happen to Lydia as she tries to make sense of the book; they seem to be based on a series of deaths that took place when Newton was a student at Cambridge. But there is also a parallel story of animal rights activists threatening Cameron's work.
I enjoyed some of the author's attempts at helping the reader visualize scenes, at getting inside the mind of the narrator, and at developing relationships among characters, but there was a sense of her trying too hard. Some of the dialogue was simply silly, even though it was meant to be poetic (at least, I think it was). Do people really talk like this in Cambridge (or anywhere else for that matter? As an example, here's what Cameron says in one scene after he and Lydia have rekindled their affair: "I don't want to walk away. And you can only walk away if you promise to take all of you with you and leave not the faintest shadow behind, here in my head. You have to promise to take away all the shadows of you that drift across my skin, everywhere, all the time. And you can't promise that so you can't go. And so you will have to kiss me again, just to make sure I'm still here, and I will have to kiss you again to make sure you are still here, that neither of us are just phantoms in each other's dreams." Perhaps I don't read enough romances, but this was clearly too much.
Coupled with the fact that Cameron was a true jerk and treated Lydia like crap, I got rather sick of their relationship, especially as it took over the plot in the latter third of the book.
Perhaps the most intriguing characters were the ghost and the dead historian (Cameron's mother). I would have preferred it if they had taken center stage.
August 16, 2014
I did not finish this book and my only regret is that I spent way too much time trying to like it. I found nothing to like. It claims to be 'a haunting literary thriller' and a 'historical mystery involving Isaac Newton's alchemy'. Why I thought anything involving Isaac Newton and his alchemy would be interesting is beyond me now. Turns out I have no interest in Isaac Newton or alchemy or the 17th century. At least not as portrayed in this book. The entire framework of the book is awkward - it is told in the 1st person by a woman who attends a funeral for a woman who died while writing a book on Isaac Newton - not exactly an attention grabber introduction. The narrator apparently had an affair with the dead woman's son and throughout the story she refers to this ex-lover as 'you' - she seems to be writing a memoir of what is happening or has happened - as the reader knows virtually nothing about the narrator or 'you' it is really hard to give a darn about anyone. The narrator is asked by her ex-lover to ghostwrite the remaining chapters of the Newton book that his mother didn't finish - if that isn't an exciting premise I don't know what would be. Plus this ex-lover works for some sort of a scientific research company and there is a second story about animal testing protesters which supposedly connects with Newton. Blah, blah blah. Maybe the pace really picks up in the second half of the book - maybe not. I don't really care.
August 14, 2007
Good story to why I read this book...because I knew that I was going to meet the author in the city where it takes place and she was going to take us on a walk through the city pointing out inspirations and scenes. I ended up really enjoying the book though because it is a cross between a nonfiction and a fiction. It deals with the true life of Issac Newton and tries to explain in an extreme way how he became one of the best scientists/discoverers in history. The only drawback was the ending...it was lame.
January 6, 2023
4,5 sterren - Nederlandse paperback
Quote: Cuff zou de betekenis van dit jaartal, 1665, niet hebben geweten, tenminste, ik denk van niet. Bij 1666 was er misschien een lampje gaan branden: het jaar waarin de Grote plaag in Engeland tot bedaren kwam en de Grote brand van Londen, de hoofdstad verwoestte.-
Quote: Toen we een jaar of acht geleden in een keet over alles en niets zien te praten, met een mater en een glas tequila in een variétébar ergens in het midden van een wirwar van straten, de winkels waar ze kroonluchters ter grootte van ontworteld bomen verkochten, en zwaarden die met juwelen waren bezet, antieke klokken en medische modellen van mensen en dieren met en linnen, gekookt en gestreken tot hef stijf en spierwit was, zei ik:" Als ik ooit met iemand vernietigd worden dan graag met jou".-
Quote: Onder het dek van de schuit waarop Greene en Measey vol bewondering naar de rijkdommen van het Fenland en het drama van de Fenhemel keken, terwijl Fenmuggen kans zagen onder het zijden gaas van de Engelse glasverkopers te komen, lagen in een van de kisten met glaswerk, onder de stelen van gedraaid cristallo en schaken van robijnrood glas, zeven prisma's dicht opeen in een doos, beschermd door een dik opvullen van gedroogd zeewier, te wachten op licht.
Quote: Niet alleen deeltjes can licht of energie kunnen verstrengeld raken, ook de tijd kan dat. Ja, momenten van tijd kunnen verstrengeld raken. De zeventiende eeuw en het heden zijn verstrengeld geraakt; ze zijn met elkaar verbonden door tijd en ruimte.-
Ik word mateloos gekweld door de twist waarin ik verwikkeld ben en ik heb de afgelopen twaalf maanden niet goed gegeten of geslapen, en evenmin bezit ik de gemoedsrust van weleer.
(Newton correspondentie 3, p. 279)
Als ik over Greswold en Isaac Newtons gecompliceerde vriendschap met een zekere Heer F. had verteld, zou hij daarvan niets hebben opgeschreven. Hij zou het niet relevant hebben gevonden. Hoe kon dat alles verbonden zijn met moorden in 2002 en 2003?
Mooie omschrijvingen uit de 17e eeuw waardoor het voor mij, met wat geschiedenis kennis, een soort van film in mijn hoofd wordt. Toegevoegde waarde voor mij.
De verstrengeling van heden en verleden, aangevuld door moorden in beide tijden en een verloren liefde maakt het tot een goede literaire historische roman met en mysterie twist.
Het heeft mij gepakt, het weefgetouw van feiten en echte personages uit het verleden vermengd met speculaties en geheimen, in heden en verleden. Aanrader volgens mij.
Quote: Cuff zou de betekenis van dit jaartal, 1665, niet hebben geweten, tenminste, ik denk van niet. Bij 1666 was er misschien een lampje gaan branden: het jaar waarin de Grote plaag in Engeland tot bedaren kwam en de Grote brand van Londen, de hoofdstad verwoestte.-
Quote: Toen we een jaar of acht geleden in een keet over alles en niets zien te praten, met een mater en een glas tequila in een variétébar ergens in het midden van een wirwar van straten, de winkels waar ze kroonluchters ter grootte van ontworteld bomen verkochten, en zwaarden die met juwelen waren bezet, antieke klokken en medische modellen van mensen en dieren met en linnen, gekookt en gestreken tot hef stijf en spierwit was, zei ik:" Als ik ooit met iemand vernietigd worden dan graag met jou".-
Quote: Onder het dek van de schuit waarop Greene en Measey vol bewondering naar de rijkdommen van het Fenland en het drama van de Fenhemel keken, terwijl Fenmuggen kans zagen onder het zijden gaas van de Engelse glasverkopers te komen, lagen in een van de kisten met glaswerk, onder de stelen van gedraaid cristallo en schaken van robijnrood glas, zeven prisma's dicht opeen in een doos, beschermd door een dik opvullen van gedroogd zeewier, te wachten op licht.
Quote: Niet alleen deeltjes can licht of energie kunnen verstrengeld raken, ook de tijd kan dat. Ja, momenten van tijd kunnen verstrengeld raken. De zeventiende eeuw en het heden zijn verstrengeld geraakt; ze zijn met elkaar verbonden door tijd en ruimte.-
Ik word mateloos gekweld door de twist waarin ik verwikkeld ben en ik heb de afgelopen twaalf maanden niet goed gegeten of geslapen, en evenmin bezit ik de gemoedsrust van weleer.
(Newton correspondentie 3, p. 279)
Als ik over Greswold en Isaac Newtons gecompliceerde vriendschap met een zekere Heer F. had verteld, zou hij daarvan niets hebben opgeschreven. Hij zou het niet relevant hebben gevonden. Hoe kon dat alles verbonden zijn met moorden in 2002 en 2003?
Mooie omschrijvingen uit de 17e eeuw waardoor het voor mij, met wat geschiedenis kennis, een soort van film in mijn hoofd wordt. Toegevoegde waarde voor mij.
De verstrengeling van heden en verleden, aangevuld door moorden in beide tijden en een verloren liefde maakt het tot een goede literaire historische roman met en mysterie twist.
Het heeft mij gepakt, het weefgetouw van feiten en echte personages uit het verleden vermengd met speculaties en geheimen, in heden en verleden. Aanrader volgens mij.
August 7, 2019
A modern-day mystery rooted in the history of science -- specifically in Isaac Newton's Cambridge career, with the emphasis on his alchemical researches? Oh, yes. As you can imagine, this book had sold itself to me before I was halfway through the blurb's first paragraph.
And I wasn't to be disappointed. To be sure, the plot became a bit Dan Brownish toward the end, but the book as a whole is so beautifully written, and had so completely enmeshed me by then, that I was prepared to overlook the Mount Implausible aspects. (To be a bit more specific: I'm very much aware that big corporations can mount dirty-tricks campaigns -- see the relevant parts of my book Corrupted Science for starters -- but the specifics of this particular dirty-tricks campaign raised my eyebrows a bit.)
Lydia Brooke is a writer. For a long time she was in an adulterous relationship with the married Cameron Brown in Cambridge, but she broke that off and has persuaded herself she has her feelings for him under control. When his mother, historian Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found dead in mysterious circumstances. he begs Lydia to finish Elizabeth's last book, a biography of Newton as alchemist. So Lydia moves into the dead woman's house, The Studio, and sets to work.
Soon she realizes there are odd things going on. There are plays of light within the house that can't be explained naturally. Documents appear and disappear for no apparent reason -- or, even more unsettlingly, with what appears to be purposeful direction. Lydia has odd visions and unusually powerful dreams. And, despite herself, she falls back into her old relationship with Cameron.
Meanwhile, it seems a militant animal-rights movement called NABED is committing crimes of sadistic violence, up to and including murder, in Cambridge and its environs. Could these be linked to Elizabeth's researches and Lydia's resumption of them? Is Elizabeth's old friend, spirit medium Dilys Kite, really as bonkers as she appears?
All these elements are deftly twined together to make a coherent plot that's part ghost story, part detective yarn, part intellectual mystery, part scholarly game (complete with sample chapters from Elizabeth's book containing a lot of genuine, and genuinely yummy, history), part love story . . . you name it. Stott's gleeful lack of timidity about mixing genres is another reason I enjoyed the novel so much.
I did have a minor personal difficulty with Ghostwalk. One of my most valued friends is called Cameron Brown, and, far from being the smooth-talking, amoral, untrustworthy deceiver who's the Cameron Brown here, he's decidedly among the good guys. So every time the name came up during the tale I was having to do a double-take!
Ghostwalk clearly isn't a novel for everyone -- just take a look around Goodreads and you'll find plenty of negative opinions -- but it is very much a novel for me. A keeper, as they say.
And I wasn't to be disappointed. To be sure, the plot became a bit Dan Brownish toward the end, but the book as a whole is so beautifully written, and had so completely enmeshed me by then, that I was prepared to overlook the Mount Implausible aspects. (To be a bit more specific: I'm very much aware that big corporations can mount dirty-tricks campaigns -- see the relevant parts of my book Corrupted Science for starters -- but the specifics of this particular dirty-tricks campaign raised my eyebrows a bit.)
Lydia Brooke is a writer. For a long time she was in an adulterous relationship with the married Cameron Brown in Cambridge, but she broke that off and has persuaded herself she has her feelings for him under control. When his mother, historian Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found dead in mysterious circumstances. he begs Lydia to finish Elizabeth's last book, a biography of Newton as alchemist. So Lydia moves into the dead woman's house, The Studio, and sets to work.
Soon she realizes there are odd things going on. There are plays of light within the house that can't be explained naturally. Documents appear and disappear for no apparent reason -- or, even more unsettlingly, with what appears to be purposeful direction. Lydia has odd visions and unusually powerful dreams. And, despite herself, she falls back into her old relationship with Cameron.
Meanwhile, it seems a militant animal-rights movement called NABED is committing crimes of sadistic violence, up to and including murder, in Cambridge and its environs. Could these be linked to Elizabeth's researches and Lydia's resumption of them? Is Elizabeth's old friend, spirit medium Dilys Kite, really as bonkers as she appears?
All these elements are deftly twined together to make a coherent plot that's part ghost story, part detective yarn, part intellectual mystery, part scholarly game (complete with sample chapters from Elizabeth's book containing a lot of genuine, and genuinely yummy, history), part love story . . . you name it. Stott's gleeful lack of timidity about mixing genres is another reason I enjoyed the novel so much.
I did have a minor personal difficulty with Ghostwalk. One of my most valued friends is called Cameron Brown, and, far from being the smooth-talking, amoral, untrustworthy deceiver who's the Cameron Brown here, he's decidedly among the good guys. So every time the name came up during the tale I was having to do a double-take!
Ghostwalk clearly isn't a novel for everyone -- just take a look around Goodreads and you'll find plenty of negative opinions -- but it is very much a novel for me. A keeper, as they say.
November 16, 2016
Ill-conceived and just not believable in any way. I barely finished this one. In the past, I enjoyed Rebecca Stott's other book, The Coral Thief, but this one was a stinker.
Consider: 27% of those who have read this book rated it two stars or less. They are wise. Do not waste your precious life's hours with this book. You can do better, fellow readers. Find something else to read.
Consider: 27% of those who have read this book rated it two stars or less. They are wise. Do not waste your precious life's hours with this book. You can do better, fellow readers. Find something else to read.
January 8, 2009
So ridiculous I promptly forgot it. I'm growing weary of the DaVinci-bred "it's about smart people so it must be a smart book" genre. Zero suspense, a creaky supernatural subplot, lots of Cambridge history... and animal rights terrorists? If they were worth the energy, I'd spend more time enumerating the shortcomings of the vain, humorless protagonist and her scumbucket boyfriend.
May 5, 2021
A historian incurs the icy wrath of a ghost whose past crimes manifest in the present.
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@farha_writing
January 29, 2025
Zaista treba da prestanem sa praksom čitanja loših romana. Ja ne znam da odustanem. Ovo je bilo smor.
January 23, 2010
I so desperately wanted to give this book more stars, but really, I can't. Rebecca Stott takes what could be an amazing tale and muddles it into something implausible and contrived.
I love the idea of history replaying itself, of the past coming back to haunt us, of people long gone attempting to correct, hide, or undo what has been done. However, the way Stott pulls the past, the seventeenth century of Isaac Newton with the present, just does not seem to fit.
Her strength, describing seventeenth centry Cambridge and creating a woman obsessed by Newton, alchemy, and the mystery behind several deaths during the plague years are all but forgotten and I wished terribly that the focus of the book had been Elizabeth and told through the eyes of Elizabeth as she scoured the stacks, unearthed revelations, and began to be haunted by the past.
Yet, I could not put this book down, so it is still worth a read, if only to peak your curiousity about a man we all thought we knew so well from our history books.
I love the idea of history replaying itself, of the past coming back to haunt us, of people long gone attempting to correct, hide, or undo what has been done. However, the way Stott pulls the past, the seventeenth century of Isaac Newton with the present, just does not seem to fit.
Her strength, describing seventeenth centry Cambridge and creating a woman obsessed by Newton, alchemy, and the mystery behind several deaths during the plague years are all but forgotten and I wished terribly that the focus of the book had been Elizabeth and told through the eyes of Elizabeth as she scoured the stacks, unearthed revelations, and began to be haunted by the past.
Yet, I could not put this book down, so it is still worth a read, if only to peak your curiousity about a man we all thought we knew so well from our history books.
August 14, 2011
This is an absolutely brilliant book, combining science, history, art, ghosts and suspense in a beautifully-written novel. My enjoyment of this book was almost certainly increased by it taking place in Cambridge, where I live, and more specifically Chesterton, where I used to live, the University Library, where I used to work, and Trinity College, where I currently work. In fact, I had the singularly immersive and creepy experience of reading this book while working at the desk in the Wren Library with Sir Issac Newton's death mask looming over my left shoulder. If at all possible, I highly recommend this as the ideal circumstances under which to read this book. Regardless of atmospheric surroundings, though, this novel was a thrilling, suspenseful and magnificently researched story.
August 13, 2016
Is a series of murders going back to the 1660s REALLY connected and what do they have to do with Isaac Newton?
July 16, 2023
Synopsis [from Kirkus Reviews]: In Stott's fictional debut...writer Lydia Brooke agrees to complete the unfinished manuscript left behind by her former lover's dead mother, and she enters a world where the dead do not go gently into the night.
Cambridge University's Trinity College provides the setting for this spellbinding tale that intertwines a dark 17th-century journey with the present. Lydia, a successful writer, returns to Cambridge to attend the funeral of Elizabeth Vogelsang, whose fascination with Sir Isaac Newton led her to write a potentially controversial book about the scientific and mathematical genius. But Elizabeth's investigation into Newton's live and his practice of alchemy has gone wrong. Found dead in the river with a prism clutched in her hand, Elizabeth leaves behind a meticulously researched manuscript missing its final chapter. Cameron Brown, Elizabeth's brilliant neuroscientiest son and Lydia's former lover, compels Lydia to ghostwrite the last chapter and finish his mother's book. Drawn both to Cameron and the project, Lydia acquiesces and moves into Elizabeth's cottage, with its strange, unexplained lights and colors that appear to come from nowhere. Here she meets an odd girl named Will and and even odder friend of Elizabeth's who claims to speak with the dead. Lydia also pursues a relationship with the married Cameron, who is stalked by a violent animal-rights group that objects to his use of laboratory animals. Stott embroils Lydia in a past steeped in the mysticism of alchemy and plagued by black ambition. Intrigue from Newton's past creeps into the present, eventually sweeping both Lydia and Cameron into a series of climatic events suspended somewhere between life and death.
So....faithful readers of this blog should know that I generally like to summarize books for myself. When I use blurbs from the back of the book or the fly-leaf or a Kirkus Review, then I either have little to say about the book or I'm pretty fed up with it. This time it's the latter.
What star points I'm handing out are for the bare bones of the story. There is so much here that could have made a great mystery/thriller. I'm not a huge fan of stories from the past that somehow connec up with modern events, but it does work sometimes. Not here. The book starts out with Elizabeth's death. I was all set to have Lydia take up the reins of finishing the book and, in the course of her research, actually discover who killed Elizabeth. Oh she does....but it was a ghost. A freaking ghost. And at the end of the book we find out that one of the other characters is arrested, tried, and convicted for that death and other modern mischief.
And can we talk about that ghost? Here we have this supposedly brilliant alchemist/scholar who was all set to get a big deal fellowship at Cambridge when along comes this nobody Isaac Newton who looks to be even more brilliant and people are starting to ignore the first dude. So, does he kill his rival and ensure that he'll get the fellowship after all? No. Of course not. He arranges for a bunch of fellowship holders to die just so good old Isaac will be sure to get a fellowship. Does this make any sense to any of you? And then he waits 300 years to take out revenge when another scholar comes along and starts connecting the dots about how Newton got his scholarship. And won't rest until every bit of evidence is gone indicating what he did. And manages to kill off a few more modern people in the process. O---kay....
Then we have Lydia. Who makes a deal with the ghost that she'll write Elizabeth's book in such a way that all the evidence is suppressed and says she'll destroy everything Elizabeth found. Except she doesn't keep her word and another death results (two if you count the modern-day person who is blamed for the deaths and hangs themselves in prinson). Lydia is not, in my opinion, the wisest of women. We also have the fact that this is written from Lydia's point of view and we have no idea if she is a reliable narrator--we also aren't sure who else to believe. Cameron seems very shady and so does the girl Will. The woman who can speak to the dead comes out as the most trustworthy of all the characters directly involved in this mess.
And then on top of everything we throw in this business about the animal activists. Why? All I can figure is that it was to try and provide some red herrings about who murdered Elizabeth. And, of course, they made convenient scapegoats for the official story--because how on earth could they possibly bring a ghost to trial?
Overall, a very unsatisfying read that I completed only because I had committed myself to reading it for a challenge. When I read the synopsis I was taken by the academic connections (I love me an academic mystery). But, sadly, despite the scholarly research done by Elizabeth, this didn't strike me as an academic mystery. It was more a tale of paranormal activity. ★★--barely.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.
Cambridge University's Trinity College provides the setting for this spellbinding tale that intertwines a dark 17th-century journey with the present. Lydia, a successful writer, returns to Cambridge to attend the funeral of Elizabeth Vogelsang, whose fascination with Sir Isaac Newton led her to write a potentially controversial book about the scientific and mathematical genius. But Elizabeth's investigation into Newton's live and his practice of alchemy has gone wrong. Found dead in the river with a prism clutched in her hand, Elizabeth leaves behind a meticulously researched manuscript missing its final chapter. Cameron Brown, Elizabeth's brilliant neuroscientiest son and Lydia's former lover, compels Lydia to ghostwrite the last chapter and finish his mother's book. Drawn both to Cameron and the project, Lydia acquiesces and moves into Elizabeth's cottage, with its strange, unexplained lights and colors that appear to come from nowhere. Here she meets an odd girl named Will and and even odder friend of Elizabeth's who claims to speak with the dead. Lydia also pursues a relationship with the married Cameron, who is stalked by a violent animal-rights group that objects to his use of laboratory animals. Stott embroils Lydia in a past steeped in the mysticism of alchemy and plagued by black ambition. Intrigue from Newton's past creeps into the present, eventually sweeping both Lydia and Cameron into a series of climatic events suspended somewhere between life and death.
So....faithful readers of this blog should know that I generally like to summarize books for myself. When I use blurbs from the back of the book or the fly-leaf or a Kirkus Review, then I either have little to say about the book or I'm pretty fed up with it. This time it's the latter.
What star points I'm handing out are for the bare bones of the story. There is so much here that could have made a great mystery/thriller. I'm not a huge fan of stories from the past that somehow connec up with modern events, but it does work sometimes. Not here. The book starts out with Elizabeth's death. I was all set to have Lydia take up the reins of finishing the book and, in the course of her research, actually discover who killed Elizabeth. Oh she does....but it was a ghost. A freaking ghost. And at the end of the book we find out that one of the other characters is arrested, tried, and convicted for that death and other modern mischief.
And can we talk about that ghost? Here we have this supposedly brilliant alchemist/scholar who was all set to get a big deal fellowship at Cambridge when along comes this nobody Isaac Newton who looks to be even more brilliant and people are starting to ignore the first dude. So, does he kill his rival and ensure that he'll get the fellowship after all? No. Of course not. He arranges for a bunch of fellowship holders to die just so good old Isaac will be sure to get a fellowship. Does this make any sense to any of you? And then he waits 300 years to take out revenge when another scholar comes along and starts connecting the dots about how Newton got his scholarship. And won't rest until every bit of evidence is gone indicating what he did. And manages to kill off a few more modern people in the process. O---kay....
Then we have Lydia. Who makes a deal with the ghost that she'll write Elizabeth's book in such a way that all the evidence is suppressed and says she'll destroy everything Elizabeth found. Except she doesn't keep her word and another death results (two if you count the modern-day person who is blamed for the deaths and hangs themselves in prinson). Lydia is not, in my opinion, the wisest of women. We also have the fact that this is written from Lydia's point of view and we have no idea if she is a reliable narrator--we also aren't sure who else to believe. Cameron seems very shady and so does the girl Will. The woman who can speak to the dead comes out as the most trustworthy of all the characters directly involved in this mess.
And then on top of everything we throw in this business about the animal activists. Why? All I can figure is that it was to try and provide some red herrings about who murdered Elizabeth. And, of course, they made convenient scapegoats for the official story--because how on earth could they possibly bring a ghost to trial?
Overall, a very unsatisfying read that I completed only because I had committed myself to reading it for a challenge. When I read the synopsis I was taken by the academic connections (I love me an academic mystery). But, sadly, despite the scholarly research done by Elizabeth, this didn't strike me as an academic mystery. It was more a tale of paranormal activity. ★★--barely.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2024
I am conflicted upon completion of Ghostwalk. Did I like this or not? More so, did I like it or really like it? Upon reflection, I have decided that I enjoyed it.
But there are several things about this book that bug me. For most of the book, I couldn't tell at all where it was going. It seemed very disjointed, and it seemed to bounce around trying to hit all the authors marks.
The ending and explanation did not at all to me fit the narrative of the story ( I will not spoil it for you, dear reader).
Rebecca Stott, in the end, did manage to get me attached to the main character and the overall meaning of the story.
Hence, my conflicted status.
But there are several things about this book that bug me. For most of the book, I couldn't tell at all where it was going. It seemed very disjointed, and it seemed to bounce around trying to hit all the authors marks.
The ending and explanation did not at all to me fit the narrative of the story ( I will not spoil it for you, dear reader).
Rebecca Stott, in the end, did manage to get me attached to the main character and the overall meaning of the story.
Hence, my conflicted status.
February 3, 2018
This started out very promising. I usually love the 17th Century, Cambridge, Newton, alchemists. But then and it all went downhill from there.
And, quibble! Why are the scholars in this story calling the last book of the Bible "Revelations?" Three times. Yes, I counted. It's Revelation. Just the one. Even Wikipedia says so.
And, quibble! Why are the scholars in this story calling the last book of the Bible "Revelations?" Three times. Yes, I counted. It's Revelation. Just the one. Even Wikipedia says so.
November 17, 2020
Reading this in 2020, what strikes me most is even in the 1660s during plague years, humans altered their behavior in order to deal with an epidemic, created city lockdowns, isolation sick houses... And yet anti-maskers continue vociferously to proclaim this is a liberal invention.
Though, makes one think, Newton made some great discoveries in his Cambridge room during the plague years... history will reveal the inventors and discoveries of 2020.
Though, makes one think, Newton made some great discoveries in his Cambridge room during the plague years... history will reveal the inventors and discoveries of 2020.
June 24, 2019
Meh. A lot of atmosphere, but ultimately, it was too murky for me. The ghost story part of the plot didn’t convince and the modern conspiracy involving the scientist lover of the narrator was flat. I felt like the author wanted these two mysteries to intensify each other, but instead, they functioned like conflicting wavelengths that flattened each other out.
September 13, 2022
An awesome walk between centuries, science, alchemy, including dimensional questioning to stir up the what-could-bes in this mixed up universe we live in! Thanks!
June 19, 2017
Whilst Ghostwalk held my interest at first, it became rather silly as it reached the halfway point. The characters were not realistic, and although the writing was fine on the whole, the dialogue often felt a little stagnant and unlikely. Rather far-fetched, with many ends that did not tie together at all well.
November 30, 2012
Spine-chilling, tense and full of accurate detail this beautiful Ghost story is a compelling read.
This beautiful, Ghost story about obsession and love will touch your heart and have you jumping in your seat when the lights are off. The absorbing narrative sent chills down my spine as I lost myself within this masterpiece with historical elements within, which is set in the backdrop of England’s Cambridge in 2003. The finely woven, intricate web of details are exquisite as you immerse yourself in one of the most compelling and romantic love stories, that exudes a deep passion and mystery that makes the storyline even more intriguing - as character’s become entangled in a complex labyrinth of hidden secrets and betrayal. Ambitious, the main character’s curiosity and inquisitiveness gets the better of her as a great list of deaths from the seventeenth-centaury come to light that will shock and surprise you as the story turns on its head. With a historian’s son finding his mother’s dead body floating in the river one day clutching upon her person a glass prism, and leaving only half a book written about Isaac Newton the Alchemist behind her, it is not long before prying eyes unravel more than just an unwritten manuscript.
Full of scientifically splendid theories, ideas and experiments this is a novel that completely and utterly breaks the stereotypical trend for your usual Ghost story, as within the uncovered history many secrets and lies lurk beneath the surface which elapse into the modern day. I loved the merging together of different eras which makes this book a contemporary and current read, which unlike classics (i.e. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley) it is something which as a reader you are able to connect with easier, thus the characters you can relate to and empathize with. Also being in the present day it makes the narrative and the sinister and spooky side of the story even more ‘real’ and in a way this can heighten the tension and drama within the tale for you can picture it unfolding before your very eyes. The historical investigation got under my skin and I felt like a curious Doctor Watson trying to keep up with Sherlock’s clues and findings so that I could eventually piece them all together, hence finding out more about the mysterious figure and what is actually lurking within the shadows. Isaac Newton’s work on Alchemy, forces and gravity was fascinating and brought back memories of when I studied his work for science, which cannot fail to broaden ones mind and delight the senses. It is eerie, hypnotic and a real intense thriller that embodies everything I love in a compelling mystery that has a touch of the contemporary thriller & crime authors within it (i.e. Sam Bourne and Camilla Lackberg).
A haunting, intelligent and subtle but effective literary thriller has to be the most fantastic book I have encountered within its genre, and something which I found really hard to put down because I was so immersed within the story. If you love detailed description and great writing similar to a classic read and yet with such a fresh and original, modern twist then I urge that you pluck this Ghost story off the shelf for it will definitely without a doubt surprise you. Totally different from the norm and something quite special I highly commend Rebecca Stott for her accomplished writing that is a joy to read, and which will blow you away!
This beautiful, Ghost story about obsession and love will touch your heart and have you jumping in your seat when the lights are off. The absorbing narrative sent chills down my spine as I lost myself within this masterpiece with historical elements within, which is set in the backdrop of England’s Cambridge in 2003. The finely woven, intricate web of details are exquisite as you immerse yourself in one of the most compelling and romantic love stories, that exudes a deep passion and mystery that makes the storyline even more intriguing - as character’s become entangled in a complex labyrinth of hidden secrets and betrayal. Ambitious, the main character’s curiosity and inquisitiveness gets the better of her as a great list of deaths from the seventeenth-centaury come to light that will shock and surprise you as the story turns on its head. With a historian’s son finding his mother’s dead body floating in the river one day clutching upon her person a glass prism, and leaving only half a book written about Isaac Newton the Alchemist behind her, it is not long before prying eyes unravel more than just an unwritten manuscript.
Full of scientifically splendid theories, ideas and experiments this is a novel that completely and utterly breaks the stereotypical trend for your usual Ghost story, as within the uncovered history many secrets and lies lurk beneath the surface which elapse into the modern day. I loved the merging together of different eras which makes this book a contemporary and current read, which unlike classics (i.e. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley) it is something which as a reader you are able to connect with easier, thus the characters you can relate to and empathize with. Also being in the present day it makes the narrative and the sinister and spooky side of the story even more ‘real’ and in a way this can heighten the tension and drama within the tale for you can picture it unfolding before your very eyes. The historical investigation got under my skin and I felt like a curious Doctor Watson trying to keep up with Sherlock’s clues and findings so that I could eventually piece them all together, hence finding out more about the mysterious figure and what is actually lurking within the shadows. Isaac Newton’s work on Alchemy, forces and gravity was fascinating and brought back memories of when I studied his work for science, which cannot fail to broaden ones mind and delight the senses. It is eerie, hypnotic and a real intense thriller that embodies everything I love in a compelling mystery that has a touch of the contemporary thriller & crime authors within it (i.e. Sam Bourne and Camilla Lackberg).
A haunting, intelligent and subtle but effective literary thriller has to be the most fantastic book I have encountered within its genre, and something which I found really hard to put down because I was so immersed within the story. If you love detailed description and great writing similar to a classic read and yet with such a fresh and original, modern twist then I urge that you pluck this Ghost story off the shelf for it will definitely without a doubt surprise you. Totally different from the norm and something quite special I highly commend Rebecca Stott for her accomplished writing that is a joy to read, and which will blow you away!
November 30, 2008
I picked this up at the library while browsing new materials, attracted by the idea of a ghost tale set in Cambridge, England, where I once lived. The New Yorker review sounded promising, too:
"A Cambridge historian dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind the nearly completed manuscript of a book on the alchemical experiments of Isaac Newton. Her son, a research scientist, hires his former lover, Lydia, to finish the book. Meanwhile, a shadowy group of animal-rights activists escalate their violent attacks. As Lydia is drawn further into Newton's seventeenth-century world, she begins to believe that his ghost is haunting her and, perhaps, directing the murderous events of the present. Stott, a historian of science, deploys her research effortlessly and demonstrates great attention to detail, but the proliferation of themes means that none are explored in much depth."
I started listening to this on a two-hour drive on a dark, rainy night -- probably near-perfect conditions to hear it. The writing initially reminded me a bit of a cross between Daphne duMaurier and Penelope Fitzgerald, and the descriptions of areas in and near Cambridge brought back nostalgic memories. Alas, after that first near-hypnotic session, I found some of the plot devices wore thin. More to the point, I grew very weary of the particular reader chosen. It's hard to find a good female reader; in part because darn near every one seems to have a sibilant /S/ (or so it seems -- perhaps I'm just hypersensitive). At any rate, I found myself fast-forwarding through some sections done in a particularly grating "voice" that represented the elderly murder victim's journal.
The plot is rather convoluted, but suffice it to say that it spans both Newton's time and our own, with interwoven conspiracies past and present. Two murders -- one in the distant past and another in modern day Cambridge - bracket a tale of conflicting loyalties and thwarted passions.
The novel's strengths are its wonderful sense of atmosphere -- Stott writes lyrically and knowledgeably (she is a science historian). At times I wondered how much license she'd taken with Newton's life, but the post-script makes it clear that the essential points are factual, which made their incorporation into a rather fanciful tale something of a tour-de-force.
The weaknesses are (to my taste) a certain over-romanticizing -- I grew impatient with the protagonist's Lydia's repeated reflections on her love affair with the central male character. But, then, I confess to being very irritated by romance writing in general, and this probably wouldn't be the thing most readers singled out as a flaw. More striking, perhaps, are certain "leaps of faith" required at the climax, which in contrast with the rest of the book seems to go lickety-split over some important events. The climax seemed rushed and confusing to me.
"A Cambridge historian dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind the nearly completed manuscript of a book on the alchemical experiments of Isaac Newton. Her son, a research scientist, hires his former lover, Lydia, to finish the book. Meanwhile, a shadowy group of animal-rights activists escalate their violent attacks. As Lydia is drawn further into Newton's seventeenth-century world, she begins to believe that his ghost is haunting her and, perhaps, directing the murderous events of the present. Stott, a historian of science, deploys her research effortlessly and demonstrates great attention to detail, but the proliferation of themes means that none are explored in much depth."
I started listening to this on a two-hour drive on a dark, rainy night -- probably near-perfect conditions to hear it. The writing initially reminded me a bit of a cross between Daphne duMaurier and Penelope Fitzgerald, and the descriptions of areas in and near Cambridge brought back nostalgic memories. Alas, after that first near-hypnotic session, I found some of the plot devices wore thin. More to the point, I grew very weary of the particular reader chosen. It's hard to find a good female reader; in part because darn near every one seems to have a sibilant /S/ (or so it seems -- perhaps I'm just hypersensitive). At any rate, I found myself fast-forwarding through some sections done in a particularly grating "voice" that represented the elderly murder victim's journal.
The plot is rather convoluted, but suffice it to say that it spans both Newton's time and our own, with interwoven conspiracies past and present. Two murders -- one in the distant past and another in modern day Cambridge - bracket a tale of conflicting loyalties and thwarted passions.
The novel's strengths are its wonderful sense of atmosphere -- Stott writes lyrically and knowledgeably (she is a science historian). At times I wondered how much license she'd taken with Newton's life, but the post-script makes it clear that the essential points are factual, which made their incorporation into a rather fanciful tale something of a tour-de-force.
The weaknesses are (to my taste) a certain over-romanticizing -- I grew impatient with the protagonist's Lydia's repeated reflections on her love affair with the central male character. But, then, I confess to being very irritated by romance writing in general, and this probably wouldn't be the thing most readers singled out as a flaw. More striking, perhaps, are certain "leaps of faith" required at the climax, which in contrast with the rest of the book seems to go lickety-split over some important events. The climax seemed rushed and confusing to me.
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