May’s Book Club Choice is The Dream House by Norwich-based author Rachel Hore. Rachel Hore worked in London publishing for nearly twenty years, latterly as Senior Editorial Director, Fiction at HarperCollins Publishers where she worked with authors such as Craig Thomas, Jane Asher and Susan Howatch. She moved to Norwich in 2001 with her husband D J Taylor the author of last month’s Book Club Choice and has built a freelance career that includes editing and advising authors, teaching at the University of East Anglia and reviewing fiction for the Guardian.
The Dream House, published in 2006, was her debut novel, and was longlisted for the 2007 Romantic Novel Of The Year Award. It was described at the time as ‘A truly wonderful tale of friendship and love unexpectedly found. Within it is the story of a past unravelled’
In the book Londoner Kate Hutchinson and her husband Simon decide to move to the Suffolk Coast with their two young children. Staying with her mother-in-law while they house hunt Kate struggles to make a new life having lost her career, friends and her independence. Kate begins to wonder if they have made the right decision when out walking she comes across the house of her dreams which belongs to Agnes a frail old lady who becomes her friend. The dying woman’s story appears to echo her own and as the past and the present begin to go hand in hand Kate is inspired to recast her own life.
The book has garnered some good reviews including ‘warm, very true to life and totally engrossing’…’brilliantly evocative, wonderfully romantic’…..a beautifully written and magical novel, about life, love and family’. Do you agree? Is it true to life?
The Dream House by Rachel Hore is presently available at Jarrold Book Department in Norwich priced at £6.99 as part of their ‘3 for 2’ offer or can be bought separately for £1 off the rrp. The Book Club choice for June will be Count the Petals of the Moon Daisy by Martin Kirby.
Why another book about angst amongst those living on the comfort of money? We’ve had the awful Landscape of Love, the drippy The Perfect Life and the unbelievable Something Might Happen. Most of us, even in East Anglia, don’t live in such easy circumstances so where is the fiction that reflects that? ’
Yeah there does seem to be a lack of gritty realsim in contemporary local fiction although I sometimes wonder if I just don't know about it. The book shops and library in Norwich don't promote local fiction very well if at all. One day I went into the Millenium Library in Norwich and asked if they had any fiction set in Norfolk and I was directed to the Heritage Centre where they suggested George Borrow and Anna Sewell! I asked a similar question in one of the ‘big’ book shops in Norwich and was directed to the Local Interest section where the a copy of Line Dancing was the only example of ‘creative writing’!
By the way I'm only half way through The Dream House but I'm surprised how formulaic it is and how there are huge chunks of first person explanation from Kate Hutchnison particularly at the beginning and the conversations between Kate & Simon seem to lack any natural patterns of speech. I'm surprised as I thought the author had been a book editor.
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