I was very excited to receive an advanced galley of this book. The early reviews called it "dazzling" and the premise sounded intriguing. Indeed, it was creative, unique, and well structured, but I felt like something was missing. Actually, a few things were missing. WHAT WORKED: The novel is broken up into parts that take place in 1999, 1955, 1929, and 1900, in that order. It never revisits any of the later time frames - it just keeps taking you back in time. However, because of the author's cl...

A good book from a clever writer which suffers from a sluggish last act and a rigidly conceived format. Her characters are believable if occasionally detestable, her comedic tone is consistently on without coming across as frivolous, and she plays some interesting games with the "house as character" element seen in a lot of classic horror n' la-huuuuv-drama novels from far and away, way back in stuffy dresses fancy hair times. Unfortunately, as the book moves along its reverse-chronological path...

What a delightful novel this was! The story starts in 1999 at an American mansion, with a struggling writer, Doug, and his wife, Zee, who are staying in the carriage house. Doug is interested in an arts colony that used to be on the estate, thinking those literary stories will help revive his stalled book project. The house is known to have secrets, which are slowly revealed to the reader as the story jumps back in time to the 1950s, and later jumps again to 1929. My favorite part of the book wa...

My dearest Laurelfield,Your tale started out as a short story about male anorexia. The author have no idea what the hell happened next, and neither do I, sorry to say ! The first woman, Violet Saville Devohr, to step over your threshold, understood the meaning of doors when she said to her husband: “You may shut me in, but I can shut you out. There are two sides to every door, Augustus.” And then she proceeded to commit suicide by her own rules. She defined the rest of your story as a paint...

(4.5) In a brilliant postmodern take on two classic genres, the country house novel and the ghost story, Makkai traces – backwards – the story of a Chicago-area house, once an artists’ colony, throughout the twentieth century.The first thing you’ll notice about this novel is that, like a crazy house, it’s upside-down. That is: it opens in 1999, that near-contemporary storyline taking up about half the text; follows it with sections set in 1955 and 1929; and finishes with a prologue set in 1900.

Zee wondered, in brief amazement, if it had all been true, if she'd simply set things in motion. But no, this was her own creation, her own monster. She had willed this into being.I grudgingly have to admit that this book was brilliant.It is about a house that was built in 1900 and eventually became an artists' colony. The story is told in three parts: 1999-2001, 1955, and 1929, and a small prologue at the end which takes place in 1900. Yes, it is as if the book were written backwards.The reason...

This book definitely takes you for a ride (in more ways than one). You start off in 1999 and wind up in 1900. I was worried once I figured out that this was the format -- I was getting attached to these 1999 people, who were funny and weird, and then I'm looking ahead and realizing that we're never coming back to 1999. But -- in a bizarre, unanticipated way -- we ARE. (That's cryptic on purpose. I wouldn't spoiler this one for the world.) You get emotionally involved with all these characters, a...

This book might be a nod to The Haunting of Hill House. Laurelfield has been used intermittently as an artist colony. And I think there's a ghost. The story is told in reverse, so we start with the "current" day which is the end of 1999 (and the Y2K stuff was moderately entertaining, but so dated, perhaps it's just too soon to be a good joke yet). The writing was good, the idea was solid, the structure was interesting... so why only (generously) 2.5 stars? The characters! They were AWFUL--- ther...

It's amazing to me that so many people liked the last two sections the best. To me - the best sections by far are the first two - 1999 and 1955. I wish that Makkai had written the whole book from those two timelines instead of all four (1929 and 1900 are the last as the book is structured in reverse order). 1929 is especially disconcerting with the many, many artist perspectives.I love that we all have such different experiences with a book. I would have given this a solid four star rating if 19...

This book is so startlingly creative it defies classification. Reading it is like sinking slowly into a warm bath. Makkai's skillful prose pulled me under the surface and held me there, entranced. (Does that sound malevolent, like the book was trying to drown me? Maybe my metaphor is flawed, but I loved this book so much I would have accepted oxygen deprivation as a fair price to pay to keep reading.) Makkai tells her story in reverse, beginning with the most recent generation of the eccentric o...

(Review originally published on my blog, June 2014) The 'hundred year house' is Laurelfield, a grand, English-style manor house built in Illinois for the Devohrs, a family of eccentric, upper-class Canadians. Makkai's second novel tells the story of the house through its various incarnations - a prison for an unhappy wife; an artists' colony; the setting for an ultimately tragic tale involving swapped identities; the backdrop for an affair that never was and a search for lost files that may not

Rod Stewart once sang, “The first cut is the deepest,” and although Makkai doesn’t channel Rod Stewart in her intrepid, ambitious, darkly witty and astringent second book, that line has been embedded in me since I closed the last page. The deep cut goes back almost 100 years, to 1900, but you have to get backwards via forward progression of pages. Makkai did a bold and brave thing in her narrative, inverting the timeline, which starts in 1999. Section two starts in 1955, section three in 1929, a...

3.5 This was a very slow starter for me, but there was just enough intrigue and strange occurrences happening to keep one reading. The book starts in the present, in 1999 just before the supposed Y2K. Two couple re living in the coach house and Grace and he hubby live in the house shepherded from her mother. At one time an artist's colony the house has seen many deaths of those that have stayed there.This novel does in fact go backwards, though the first part in the present is the longest, almos...

Oh, Rebecca Makkai, I think you have become my manic pixie dream girl of literary fiction authors.Reading a Makkai novel is like gleefully flipping open all the little flaps and hatches on a fabulous Advent calendar or pop-up book. This is especially true of this novel in particular, a fictional biography of a fictional house. Its story is told in the format of three separate-but-linked novellas connected only by the house and its grounds and the artistic ambitions and troubled love relationship...

The structure of the book is very interesting because the story is told backwards. You start with the current generation in the house and then move backwards in time through the preceding 100 years. As you read, certain things the characters say and do puzzle you until you see how it relates to the generation that lived there previously. At first I loved the book. I was completely hooked into the current family living there and consumed by the mystery of what was hidden in the attic. It is the f...

I totally lost the thread of this story and had to make myself finish it. It started out promising enough, but then the story just kind of dragged and got confusing. Maybe I'm just dense.