The Circle Of Marsh House

Hi Readers, who's ready for a rambling?  I am...and since it's my blog...let's get to it.  I am a Studio Ghibli and always enjoy the fact that several of the movies are inspired by books.  One day while looking through movies I found one I had never heard of before, and lo and behold it was based on a book called When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson.  The premise sounded interesting, and I always love discovering new books...especially older ones so both the book and movie got put in the basket and onto my book shelves.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Anna is a foster child in England who has withdrawn from everybody.  Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was very small, and her beloved grandmother died just a few short years later.  She has been taken in by a very loving couple who do their best to make her feel like their daughter.  Unfortunately between her natural reticence at getting close to anybody, and her discovery that the couple get a stipend from the government, Anna comes across as very cold.  Anna's foster mom decides to send her to her friend who lives in a sleepy little beach village.  The couple are pretty relaxed, letting Anna run around as she pleases, which suites Anna just fine.  Anna finds herself drawn to an old manor known as the Marsh House.  It is old and abandoned, yet still draws the quiet and withdrawn girl.  One day, as Anna is exploring the marsh area, she see's a girl with pale yellow hair being brushed by a maid at one of the windows of Marsh House.  This image sticks with Anna, and lo and behold one day that same girl appears in the sand dunes.  The girls name is Marnie and she makes Anna promise to keep her as her special secret friend.  As Anna is naturally quiet, this suits her just fine.  The girls have a couple of adventures and learn more about each other.  We learn that Marnie lives in the Marsh House with her nurse and two maids, all of which are borderline abusive.  They threaten Marnie with a trip to the abandon windmill if she misbehaves, which absolutely terrifies the girl.   Marnie's parents are away most of the time, leaving her all alone with the staff.  One night Marnie and Anna end up in the windmill, and get stuck.  When Anna wakes up, she is alone and very upset that Marnie would leave her.  Anna is rescued and taken back to recover as she is very sick.  As she recovers she sneaks out to try and find Marnie.  Marnie is at her window and yells down a heartfelt and tearful apology and tells Anna that she is being taken away.  Anna is understandably devastated and takes to her bed.  Anna finally decides to get back to exploring and heads to the Marsh House.  She is surprised to see a lot of activity and discovers a family with five kids has moved in for the summer.  She is drawn out of her shell and spends a lot of time with the family, finally finding a place she belongs.  One of the girls, after acting a bit weird, finally shows Anna an old diary she found in her room.  The diary belongs to Marnie and in it there are references to a special friend and a few of the events that Anna and Marnie experienced together.  They bring the diary to the mother and discover that it is over 50 years old...which puzzles Anna 'cause her hazy memories are from recent times.  Eventually they get to talk with an old family friend who grew up in the area of the Marsh House.  The whole story comes out and it turns out that Marnie was a girl who grew up with a lonely life until she got sick after a night in the windmill.  Her parents brought her back from the Marsh House, but more tragedy struck when her father died.  Marnie married her friend Edward, but he was killed in the war when their own daughter was only a couple of years old.  The daughter was sent to America to keep her safe and did not return until she was 13 years old.  At that point her relationship with her mother Marnie was strained.  The daughter ran away and had a daughter herself, who she brought back to be raised by Marnie.  The daughter and her new husband then died in a car accident leaving the child to be brought up solely by Marnie who was the only family left.  Unfortunately Marnie never got over the death of her daughter and died a few short years later...sound familiar?  That's right, Anna is Marnie's granddaughter!  Anna is very happy to finally have her family history and is able to warm up to her foster parents, who really do want her to be happy.  Anna herself becomes much happier and able to let people love her again.

World Building - The setting of this story is pretty small, a tiny little village, a marsh/beach, the house Anna stays at and the Marsh House.  That being said the world is perfectly complete.  The author was able to create not just a world, but an atmosphere that was able to transport me as a reader so completely that it was sometimes a shock when I put the book down to realize that I wasn't actually at a little English beach.  I can totally see why somebody would be inspired to make a movie after reading this, just to capture the world.

Story - The story was good.  It was a little different then I originally anticipated, as most of the blurbs tout it as a ghost story.  I feel like it is more of a circle of life type deal, with family and friends being when and where they are most needed.  The story made sense and other then a few overly convenient moments was well done.  Combined with everything else it worked well.

Character - I really liked the characters in this story.  There was a lot of introspection and growing and feeling and variety.  Each character was fully formed, each character had a story, each character stayed true to themselves, and nobody acted out of character just to further the story.  I also really liked how every single character felt well thought out was necessary for the story.

 Editing - The editing was fairly well done.  The story could have become very confusing, especially with the dream like quality that permeated the whole book, but overall the whole thing was readable and sensical.  Like I said before, other then a few small overly convenient details the book read beautifully and stayed with me.  Good editing.

Movie - The movie was made by the famous Studio Ghibli whom I love for their ability to translate atmosphere into a watchable movie, and this film was no exception.  There were a few notable exceptions from the book to film, the biggest being that it was set in Japan instead of England which was both odd and kind of cool, it was like seeing the same story in two different views.  The thing I didn't like so much is that they made Anna a bit more aggressive and almost mean, where in the book she was just withdrawn and stoic.  I also felt the movie was a wee bit rushed compared to the book.  Overall though the signature atmosphere, introspectiveness and sheer beauty were all there, just like I wanted.

Nostalgia - So one of the things that really struck me about this book was the sense of nostalgia it gave me.  This is totally a book I would have LOVED and read over and over back when I was in the 10-12ish age.  I really enjoyed reading this book now, but really wish I had been able to read it when I was younger because I can see it becoming one of my favorite.  I'm not 100% sure why I am so sure my younger self would have been so into this book.  Maybe it reminds me of the books I read when I was younger, maybe I can see myself pulling it off of the library shelf and curling up in my yard, maybe I can see myself forcing my siblings to act it out, maybe it was my affinity for imaginary friends, who knows.  Every once in a while I will get a book like this, where as much as I enjoy it as an adult, I really want to go back in time and give myself some of these books.

Ghost Story - This book was touted as a ghost story...but it really wasn't...but it kind of was.  It is really hard to really put this in any one category 'cause it really doesn't follow any rules...which I love.  The mechanism of the interaction between Marnie and Anna is never fully explained.  We know that they both had the same experiences because Anna remembers them, even if it is a bit muddled and Marnie records them in her diary, even if Anna's name is never actually mentioned.  I don't think that this pairing needs a "scientific" or "realistic" explanation.  I like to think that these two souls that were connected by blood and love found each other at their loneliest and helped each other survive.  I am good with the idea that love can transcend time and space and I'm gonna leave it at that.

Overall Impression - I really enjoyed this book, it was different and surprising and atmospheric and stuck with me in a good way.  I will probably reread it in late spring/early summer as it feels like it should be a seasonal book, but regardless I really liked it.  I give it 8 out of 10 sand castles with gardens and recommend it to anybody who wants a story with heart or is looking for one for their kiddos with out too much of the yucky stuff.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Not Quit Haunted House

Alrighty folks, it's gonna be a beast of a week.  Without being held over, or overtime I'm on the ambulance for at least 96 hours this week...so if I miss a few days of posting you know why.  In the meantime, here is the first of my spooky October ramblings to tide you over.  The book is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and I have had my eye on it for quit some time.  It took me a bit to get into it, but it was worth it.  I will try and do my best to get my feelings down...but first as always SPOILERS AHEAD! (seriously if you haven't read the book yet do yourself a favor and read it first 'cause half the coolness of the book is the surprises)

The whole book has a bit of a dreamy feel to it, but I will do my best to get the basic story across.  We start the story with our unnamed narrator (we never learn her first name...or her maiden name) giving us the famous opening line of the book "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again."  This sets the stage for our story.  The narrator takes be to when she first met the older Maxim de Winter when she was no more then a shy poor girl, fresh from school in the 1930's.  She is the paid companion of a loud and brassy American woman who has decided to spend some time in Monte Carlo.  When the lady falls sick, our narrator is left to her own devices and ends up spending time, and falling in love with the quiet and reserved Maxim de Winter.  She finds out that his wife Rebecca died the year before, drowned in a boating accident and that he has left his beloved Manderly to get away from his memories.  He decides to marry her, making her the second Mrs. de Winter and takes her back to Manderly with him.  Once there our narrator spends most of her time just trying to figure out how to fit in to this new high class life.  She is haunted by the memory of Rebecca, constantly comparing herself to dead woman and coming up short.  This is not helped as most of the people in the surrounding area are constantly telling the second Mrs. de Winters how different she is from Rebecca, how Rebecca was beautiful and vibrant and personable and polished and pretty much everything that the narrator feels she is not.  The house itself holds many memories of the late Rebecca, kept alive by the mysterious house keeper Mrs. Danvers who keeps the west wing of the house exactly as it was when Rebecca was alive.  Maxim himself seems to be distant and occasionally angry now that they are back at Manderly and the narrator is concerned that he regrets his impulsive decision to marry her.  This all comes to a dramatic head when at a fancy dress party, Mrs. Danvers convinces the narrator to unknowingly wear the same costume that Rebecca wore to her last party before she died.  Maxim understandably is upset, further convincing the narrator he is not happy with her.  After the party, a boat runs ashore and subsequently a diver finds the boat Rebecca died in...with her body in it.  Maxim admits to his new wife that Rebecca didn't drown in an accident.  Maxim tells her that he shot Rebecca down at the beach after she told him she was pregnant with another mans child.  Maxim reveals that while to the world Rebecca was wonderful, she was actually quit awful and made Maxim miserable.  He shot her, put her body in her boat and sank it.  Instead of being horrified, the narrator is relieved that she no longer has to compare herself to the dead woman.  She is now confident in Maxim's love for her, precisely because she is so very different from his first wife.  The death is ruled a suicide and it seems that the de Winters can live their life in peace.  Unfortunatly, a cousin of Rebecca's declares that Maxim killed her and he has proof in the form of a note from Rebecca asking him to come see her.  He says that she would not have written the note if she planned on killing herself.  Mrs. Danvers is called in and she produces a notebook with all of Rebecca's schedule in it which shows a mysterious doctors appointment.  Maxim and the narrator are sure that when the doctor is interviewed he will tell of the pregnancy, casting doubt on the suicide story.  When the doctor is finally tracked down, it is revealed that Rebecca actually had ovarian cancer, which back in that day was untreatable and motive for suicide.  On their way home the de Winters speculate that it was possible for Rebecca to have goaded Maxim into killing her after hearing her diagnosis...one last bit of revenge before she died.  Maxim gets a call at their hotel informing him that Mrs. Danvers has disappeared after the verdict and is assumed to have moved on to another house.  The narrator has a very bad feeling and encourages Maxim to get back to Manderly.  They arrive just in time to watch it burn down.  The pair then take to the road...taking us back to the beginning of the book.

I initially chose this book because many people who recommended The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson which I adored, said it had a similar feel.  I agree with that assessment to a point.  The book defiantly falls into the atmospheric category, with much of the suspense coming from the environment itself.  Unlike Hill House, which felt mad and haunted, this book felt sad and desperate...in a good way...I'm not making any sense am I?  Ok let's try this again.  I mentioned before that the book was a little hard to get into, and this is really its only salient bad point.  It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the flowey, dreamy language which in my opinion tended to get way to overly descriptive of scenery and such.  Oddly enough once I got into the story just sort of flowed, it was one of those books that even when you put it down for a few minutes, you kept thinking about it, kept wanting to go back to it.  I absolutely LOVE this kind of book, because it feels living and breathing to me.  The author made the choice to never name the main character/narrator, leaving her as only the second Mrs. de Winters if she was named at all.  I think this was brilliant as it gave us even more of a feeling of this poor girls feelings of inadequacy.  In the end I feel that this is what this book is really about.  One girls journey into owning her own life and becoming a woman.  She starts completely powerless and then when given the opportunity to become the mistress of a very important house and family she is constantly made to feel inferior.  Lack of information, communication and encouragement from anybody at all connected with her just keeps her feeling sad and desperate to be happy.  It is not until she finds a way to posses herself and actually force communication to happen does she finally grow up.  The sequence of events in this book, while not necessarily horrifying are definitely suspenseful and surprising.  I will say I did not see most of what happened coming and that made my enjoyment of the book even more complete.  The ending of this book is the kind that I love because it ties right back to the beginning, making it possible to have a real ending without it feeling rushed or contrived.  I call this a loop ending and it is one of my favorite ways to end a book or series.  This book will not be everybodies cup of tea (or coffee), the style of it is very specific and you have to be able to let yourself just kind of get swept into the book to really enjoy it.  While not the spine tingling madness of Hill House, this book did deliver suspense and a few chills and was a great October read.  I give it 8 out of 10 cold lunches and recommend it to anybody who loves an atmospheric book, full of tension and imagery.  Happy Reading Everybody!