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"'One hot summer day, Michael Salter, nineteen-year-old scion of a posh Highland family, disappears. When his childlike aunt claims she drowned him during a fight, the family closes ranks. No police. No memorial service. No titbits for village gossips. A decade of deceit begins." -- Financial Times The Salter family orbits around Peattie House, their crumbling Scottish estate filled with threadbare furniture, patrician memories, and all the secrets that go with them. While they are gathered for their grandmother's seventieth birthday, someone breaks the silence. The web begins to unravel. But what is the white lie? How many others are built upon it? How many lives have been changed because of it? Only one person knows the whole truth. From beyond the grave, Michael loops back into the past until we see, beyond perception and memory, how deeply our decisions resound, and just what is the place, and price, of grandeur. Andrea Gillies brings us inside a big house and a great family, with an elegantly written novel of eccentric characters, twists and turns and redirects, and shocking revelations'"--… (more)
User reviews
That said, there are periods when the narrative starts to drag making reading a challenge. Also, the central mystery and revelations are nothing of the sort for an astute reader. I am not actually certain if they are supposed to be a surprise but it seems likely, and yet the suspense simply wasn't here. Regardless, the books is well-written and the story enjoyable. I felt engaged with the characters, especially poor Michael, even if I never really understood why his entire family was willing to allow his aunt's involvement in his murder to go uninvestigated.