My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.”
----John Lubbock
Rachel Hore, an English best-selling author, pens her latest contemporary story in her new book, The House on Bellevue Gardens, that narrates the story of four central characters among whom three are trying to find their way in life as they are lost and heart-broken, and the fourth person is a god-send who is here to give them shelter in her sanctuary, the house which is centered around all the four characters and holds them together tightly with an invisible string.
Synopsis:
Rosa has arrived in London from Poland to look for her younger brother Mikhail. He is supposed to be staying with their English father, but when she visits the house she finds it's locked up and there's no sign of either of them. She urgently needs work and somewhere to live while she continues her search, but what can she do and where can she go?
Stef is running away from her boyfriend Oliver and the claustrophobic life she's been living in his opulent flat. Frightened, friendless and far from her family, she needs somewhere to hide.
Rick is living in a limbo, a shy young man hiding from the world to write and draw and dream. How will he find fulfillment?
All three find refuge at 11 Bellevue Gardens, the shabbiest house of a smart white-painted Georgian terrace in North London. Here, its owner Leonie herself once found sanctuary following a short career as a model in the sixties and a destructive marriage. Now, out of gratitude, she opens her house to others in need.
However, as she helps Stef and Rosa and Rick to find their way, Leonie finds that once again the very foundations of her own life and happiness are under threat.
Leonie's 11 Bellevue Gardens home, with its shabbiness and a hidden history yet with a gorgeous surrounding, has always welcomed the warmth and the solitude of a lost stranger irrespective of his/her gender or age. This story particularly revolves around this home, as Leonie lets an Indian couple, Bella and Hari to stay along with a painter in this house. But three more new members join them, Stef, a woman running away from her abusive relationship, Rosa, a woman straight from Warsaw is here in London to look for her missing brother and Rick, a man, looking for means and space to give wings to his dreams of being a graphic artist. As the story laces from Leonie's early teenage-hood days when she was a celebrated model and days from when she suffered a distasteful marriage to the present days, along with the stories of Rosa, Stef and Rick, it will actually feel like the readers too are swaying in this shifting yet remarkable jumps in the timeline. As the house suffers a threat from the world hidden away from its love, support and free shelter, the lives of these individuals are on the verge of tumbling down.
The Silent Tide by Rachel Hore was the first book that got me into the world of this author's incredibly beautiful yet poignant stories and I was bound to become an instant fan of her writing. So when her new book came out, I couldn't resist myself from reading it. Firstly, covers of all her books are fascinating and mesmerizing to look at it. Similarly, in this book too, the cover image of a white mansion with a green and serene garden is bound to give the readers an atmospheric feel to it.
The writing style of the author is coherent as well as eloquent that is laced under a deep ocean of emotions. The narrative is at times bit dull, but most of the times the author kept it interesting and expressive enough for the readers to comprehend with the dialogues. The story opens a bit slow and midway through the story, the story moves at a snail's space and only near the end of the book, the story picks up pace where some of the major twists and unraveled and that is when it demands of a reader's full attention till the very end.
The flaws in this book are not that major and their presence is covered with the excellent set of characters. The characters are forever the best part of this author's books who will make the readers forget about their own lives and will force them to get complete lost into these character's devastating and troubling lives and circumstances. The characters are so well-developed that they will make the readers root out for them till the very last page. All the main characters are inspired from reality and their problems are very much relatable as they face some complicated issues like dominating relationship, beating shyness of one's own etc.
Next the setting of the book is very well captured by the author and depicted in its brightest hue of colors that will only make the readers feel like experience the whole story right in front of their eyes. The house itself is described with lots of in-depth details and layers thus making it alive by the author with her carefully chosen words.
In a nutshell, this coming-of-age contemporary story is laced with love, drama, friendship, bonding, family and everything in between to make it delectable and deeply touching for its readers.
Verdict: This is the kind of book that you need to carry in your handbag while you're travelling to your next vacation getaway.
Courtesy: Thanks to the author and her publishers from Simon and Schuster, for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book.
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Author Info:
Rachel Hore worked in London publishing for many years before moving with her family to Norwich, Norfolk and turning to writing fiction.
Rachel is the author of The Dream House (2006), The Memory Garden (2007), The Glass Painter's Daughter (2009), which was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Association Novel of the Year 2010, A Place of Secrets (2010), which was a Richard and Judy Bookclub pick, and A Gathering Storm (2011), which was a Sunday Times Top 5 bestseller and shortlisted for the RNA Historical Novel of the year, 2012. The Silent Tide was published in 2013 and the Sunday Times bestseller A Week in Paris in 2014.
Her new novel, The House on Bellevue Gardens, has recently been published in the UK.
Visit her here
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