The View from the Summerhouse - Hardcover

Barbara Whitnell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340588128 ISBN 13: 9780340588123

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

By the author of "Charmed Circle", this is a novel of nostalgic suspense set in Cornwall and London from World War II to the present.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The lyrically rendered settings of WWII and contemporary Cornwall highlight this well-paced novel from Whitnell (Charmed Circle). Recently widowed and newly retired from a New York ad agency, David Holt is knocking around home, wondering when he will stop seeing his wife in every corner of the garden he's unsuccessful at tending. He's ripe, then, for adventure when his journalist son Simon calls from London to say that he's been commissioned to write an article on legendary radio broadcaster Caleb Carne, whose stirring panegyrics to Britain garnered great fame during the war. Carne is a name out of David's past. As a 19-year-old American soldier, David had practically been adopted by the Carne family after a chance meeting with the youngest Carne daughter, Pen. Pen's sisters, Trish and Caro, are also potent figures in David's memory?especially Trish, who broke his heart. But that was nothing compared to the horror he experienced in a small boat off the Cornish coast with Caleb Carne and an ill-explained corpse. Meaning to get answers, David accepts Simon's offer to visit him with the Carnes; he also means to correct his original mistake and explore the possibility of a relationship with the right Carne sister this time around. While Simon has his own stormy relationship with Laura, the granddaughter of old Carne's former mistress, the puzzle of Carne's life and career is slowly put together through the flashbacks of the older generation and the investigations of the younger one. Still, despite a plausible plot, intriguing characters and romance, the surprising answer to the central mystery doesn't fully engage and, in the end, it all seems a bit too facile.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Cornwall, a Cornish village occupied by Allied forces awaiting D-Day, holds a magical spell for young GI David Holt, which is broken when he is asked to help Caleb Carne, a famous BBC commentator and Cornwall resident, dispose of a body. Told that the dead man was a spy, Holt wondered for decades about the truth of the matter. Finally, he is drawn back into the past when his son Simon is commissioned to write an article on Caleb Carne, and Holt accepts an invitation to participate in a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Britain and the BBC commentator's ninety-fifth birthday. At the same time that Holt's son is writing a story on the famous commentator and sorting out the direction of his professional and personal life, Holt is looking for the truth of the past and romance for the present. Within her multifaceted, contemporary fiction, Whitnell adroitly intermingles historical events and romance. Denise Perry Donavin

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0340588128
• ISBN 13: 9780340588123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320