#BlogTour#TheHighHouse by #JessieGreengrass @_swiftpress @randomthingstours
THE BLURB:
In this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster.
Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long?
Caro and her younger half-brother, Pauly, arrive at the High House after her father and stepmother fall victim to a faraway climate disaster—but not before they call and urge Caro to leave London. In their new home, a converted summer house cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally, the two pairs learn to live together. Yet there are limits to their safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy—the former village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything—can teach them as his health fails.
A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival under the threat of extinction, The High House is a stunning, emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the world.
MY REVIEW:
Thank you to Random Things Tours for my paperback copy and spot on the blog tour of this haunting and beautiful read!
So haunting, and so so beautifully written. I had to keep rereading lines to absorb their beauty, but this was such a compelling read I finished it in a day.
I’ve been feeling like climate change was some far away disaster that we are slowing down, but this book brings it to the forefront of the reader’s mind and screams it into your face. I am still thinking about the impact of this book on my life and behaviour.
The characters are all strong, and whilst I didn’t connect with Sally, I loved Caro and her little brother Pauly. I did however struggle with the characters’ relationships to each other and how their lives collided. It wasn’t until I was over half way that I really understood how they came to live together in the high house, and even now I feel a little confused. Francesca inherited the house from her uncle, but how did Sally and Grandy end up there? Did Francesca ask Grandy to be caretaker there, seeing as he was looking after the village?
This confusion I have was probably not helped by the timelines through the book. It changed a lot, and there were the ‘i’ and ‘ii’ breaks throughout each chapter that would have been clearer to me if the author had used actual dates.
This was a stunning and deeply affecting novel that will certainly stay with me.
4 OUT OF 5 STARS
Curling up with a Coffee and a Kindle 