The Wish House - Hardcover

Rees, Celia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333947398 ISBN 13: 9780333947395

Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books, 2005

Synopsis

In the summer of 1976, on holiday in South Wales, fifteen-year-old Richard is shocked and fascinated to meet the tenants of the historic Wish House. Jay Dalton is a well-known artist, and his large, bohemian family – casually stripping naked on the beach, smoking dope, ignoring convention – seem astonishingly glamorous. Richard falls under the spell of beautiful, free-spirited Clio, Jay’s daughter. She seduces him in a secret forest grotto, where they spend idyllic days playing out her favourite Celtic myths of brave grail knights and powerful enchantresses. But why does Jay paint so many nude studies of Clio? Why is he obsessed with the need to paint Richard? Why does his wife grow poisonous plants in her Witch’s Garden? The Daltons’ dark secrets draw Richard into a world of disturbing relationships, where he discovers, too late, that his innocent arrival at the Wish House was no accident...

About this title

Review

The last thing fifteen-year-old Richard expects when he goes exploring near his parents' annual vacation spot is to find his familiar summer haunt, the abandoned cottage he calls the Wish House, suddenly occupied. An eccentric painter named Jay Dalton and his family have bought the place and turned it into a magnet for artists and writers that conventional Richard at first finds loud and strange. But the more time he spends with Jay, his fortune-telling wife Lucia, and their bewitching daughter Clio, the more Richard finds himself relaxing into their insouciant lifestyle.

Jay insists on that Richard sit for him, Lucia confides in him like a peer, while Clio becomes his first lover. Then Richard stumbles onto a shocking family secret that indicates his trust in the free-spirited family has been misplaced. Hurt and betrayed, Richard commits an irrevocable act of destruction that abruptly ends the alluring spell of the Wish House. Not until he attends Clio’s first gallery opening years later is he able to achieve closure on the events of that memorable and painful fifteenth summer.

Celia Rees has written an age appropriate "seduction of the innocent" story, a Henry James novel for the YA set. This wonderfully sensual young adult novel is permeated with evocative images of nature and mythology, while remaining restrained in its descriptions of teen sex and implied incest. Older teen fans of Looking for Alaska and How I Live Now will appreciate Rees' dark view into the baffling world of adult motivations. –Jennifer Hubert

About the Author

Celia lives in Leamington Spa. She divides her time between writing, talking to readers in schools and libraries, and teaching creative writing on the University of Warwick's Open Studies Programme. For many years she taught English in city comprehensive schools. Her highly acclaimed novels for older children and teenagers include WITCH CHILD, PIRATES and TRUTH OR DARE.

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0333947398
• ISBN 13: 9780333947395
• Binding: Hardcover