The good house

Ann Leary

Book - 2013

"The Good House tells the story of Hildy Good, who lives in a small town on Boston's North Shore. Hildy is a successful real-estate broker, good neighbor, mother, and grandmother. She's also a raging alcoholic. Hildy's family held an intervention for her about a year before this story takes place--"if they invite you over for dinner, and it's not a major holiday," she advises "run for your life"--and now she feels lonely and unjustly persecuted. She has also fooled herself into thinking that moderation is the key to her drinking problem. As if battling her demons wasn't enough to keep her busy, Hildy soon finds herself embroiled in the underbelly of her New England town, a craggy little plac...e that harbors secrets. There's a scandal, some mysticism, babies, old houses, drinking, and desire--and a love story between two craggy sixty-somethings that's as real and sexy as you get. An exceptional novel that is at turns hilarious and sobering, The Good House asks the question: What will it take to keep Hildy Good from drinking? For good"--

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Subjects
Genres
Romance fiction
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2013.
Language
English
Main Author
Ann Leary (-)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
292 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9781250015549
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

IN Wendover, Mass., a "regular" is a coffee with cream and two sugars. "Wicked" generally means "very." And the word "townie" is not an insult, but a badge of honor. Hildy Good, the 60-year-old heroine of Ann Leary's entertaining and resonant second novel, has lived in Wendover all her life. The fictional town on Boston's North Shore is an idyllic place, full of horse farms, rocky beaches and 100-year-old houses. Longtime residents have names like Barkie Stead and Sleepy Haskell. Hildy has been the town's most successful real estate agent for decades. She takes pride not only in selling her clients' houses, but in understanding their psychology: "Alcoholics, hoarders, binge eaters, addicts, sexual deviants, philanderers, depressives - you name it, I can see it all in the worn edges of their nests." In recent years, wealthy hedge funders have flocked to the area, seeking weekend retreats and driving up prices. They want charm and original detail, as well as every modern convenience. Or as Hildy puts it: "They want it old, but they want it new." Leary has a keen eye for New England class distinctions - for how outsiders romanticize the history of a place, even as their presence alters it. Some who grew up in Wendover can't afford to stay as adults. Local businesses have been replaced by national chains. Zoning laws mandate old-timey facades, which please the newcomers and amuse everyone else. (Hildy's ex-husband refers to the nearest grocery store as "the Stop & Shop of the Seven Gables.") Even Hildy's business is threatened, by her former assistant, now an agent at Sotheby's. Those who remember Wendover as it used to be are unsentimental. The closest Hildy herself comes to nostalgia is when she recalls sunny summer days on the ocean with a boy she once loved: "Every time I have a mole removed, I think of Manny's old lobster boat." "The Good House" has a plot packed with small-town intrigues: extramarital affairs, feuding mothers, a missing child and psychic powers that trace back to the Salem witch trials, to name a few. But the book's real strength lies in its evocation of Hildy's inner world. Almost two years after her daughters intervened and sent her to rehab, Hildy has been pretending to be sober. But she drinks at home alone, adhering to a set of rules meant to keep her under control: no using the phone, no driving, nothing other than wine. At first, you don't begrudge her a glass of red, or five, after a hard day's work. She enjoys it so much, after all. But it soon becomes apparent that Hildy is falling apart. Over time, she breaks every one of her own rules, with strange and sometimes disastrous consequences. When a friend tells her how she behaved while in a drunken blackout, Hildy thinks: "It's like a suctioning of the soul, being told the things your body does when your mind is in that dead zone. It's like having your very skin peeled off, like being publicly stripped down to some gruesome inner membrane that nobody should see, and revealing it to all. I never tell a person what they did when they were drunk. I would never do this." Leary writes with humor and insight, revealing both the pure pleasure of drinking and the lies and justifications of alcoholism, the warmth Hildy feels toward others when she drinks and the desperation that makes her put alcohol before the people she loves. The result is a layered and complex portrait of a woman struggling with addiction, in a town where no secret stays secret for long. J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of "Commencement" and "Maine." Her third novel, "The Engagements," will be published in June.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 10, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review

Wendover's top-flight real-estate agent, Hildy Good, was always the life of the party. Not only could she drink everyone under the table; she'd also capitalize on her heritage as the descendant of one of Salem's persecuted witches by performing convincing mind-reading tricks that wowed with their accuracy. While Hildy admits the mentalist bit is a sham, the drinking's the real thing, one that forces her family to stage an intervention that lands her in rehab. Alas, the treatment doesn't take. Once out, Hildy drinks alone and in secret, until newcomer Rebecca McAllister comes to town. A kindred spirit burdened by an unhappy marriage, Rebecca shares her wine and her secrets about her affair with local psychologist Peter Newbold, insidiously pulling Hildy into her Fatal Attraction-like obsession. As Hildy recoils from Rebecca's delusional fantasies, her drinking escalates to dangerous levels. Leary's powerfully perceptive and smartly nuanced portrait of the perils of alcoholism is enhanced by her spot-on depiction of staid New England village life and the redemption to be found in traditions and community.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Hildy Good is a realtor in Wendover, the little Massachusetts town where she's lived her entire life. Smalltown life inevitably brings smalltown gossip, and Hildy is no exception: "I know pretty much everything that happens in this town. One way or another, it gets back to me." Suffering from alcoholism and marital problems, Hildy's always in search of distractions. Emboldened by a self-professed ability to read people-bordering on what she considers ESP-Hildy finds the intrigue she's been looking for when Boston hedge fund owner Brian McAllister and his wife, Rebecca, move to town. With her characteristic vigilance, Hildy soon uncovers a burgeoning affair between Rebecca and a local psychiatrist. As confidante, blackmailer, and real-estate broker to both Rebecca and Peter, the psychiatrist who rents the upstairs office, Hildy's entanglements not only threaten the lives of others but also tease out her own problems and self-delusions. In this second novel (after Outtakes from a Marriage), Leary creates a long-winded and melodramatic Peyton Place, but convincingly displays the corrosive and sometimes dire consequences of denial and overconfidence. Agent: Maria Massie, Lippincot Massie McQuilkin. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Hildy Good has lived in the same small town on Boston's North Shore for all of her 60 years. She has a successful business selling real estate (though Sotheby's is gaining on her), she married and had two children with her college sweetheart (they divorced when he admitted he was gay), and she likes to drink (her children forced her to go to rehab). After rehab, Hildy started sneaking the occasional drink alone until one of her wealthy clients-a transplant from the city-turns into a drinking buddy, and Hildy becomes privy to a secret she may not be able to keep. A romance with an unlikely suitor and the possibility of the biggest sale of her career lessen Hildy's willpower. Then she must face the reality that her drinking may lead to her professional and personal ruin unless she confronts her addiction. VERDICT In Leary's third book (An Innocent, A Broad; Outtakes from a Marriage) the perils of addiction come to life. Sure to please fans of women's fiction featuring women of a certain age such as the novels of Jeanne Ray and Elizabeth Berg. [Leary is the wife of actor Denis Leary-Ed.]-Karen Core, Detroit P.L. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A supposedly recovering alcoholic real estate agent tells her not-exactly-trustworthy version of life in her small New England town in this tragicomic novel by Leary (Outtakes from a Marriage, 2008, etc.). Sixty-year-old Hildy Good, a divorced realtor who has lived all her life in Wendover on the Massachusetts North Shore, proudly points to having an ancestor burned at the stake at the Salem witch trials. In fact, her party trick is to do psychic readings using subtle suggestions and observational skills honed by selling homes. At first, the novel seems to center on Hildy's insights about her Wendover neighbors, particularly her recent client Rebecca McAllister, a high-strung young woman who has moved into a local mansion with her businessman husband and two adopted sons. Hildy witnesses Rebecca having trouble fitting in with other mothers, visiting the local psychiatrist Peter Newbold, who rents an office above Hildy's, and winning a local horse show on her expensive new mount. Hildy is acerbically funny and insightful about her neighbors; many, like her, are from old families whose wealth has evaporated. She becomes Rebecca's confidante about the affair Rebecca is having with Peter, whom Hildy helped baby-sit when he was a lonely child. She helps another family who needs to sell their house to afford schooling for their special needs child. She begins an affair with local handyman Frankie Getchell, with whom she had a torrid romance as a teenager. But Hildy, who has recently spent a stint in rehab and joined AA after an intervention by her grown daughters, is not quite the jolly eccentric she appears. There are those glasses of wine she drinks alone at night, those morning headaches and memory lapses that are increasing in frequency. As both Rebecca's and Hildy's lives spin out of control, the tone darkens until it approaches tragedy. Throughout, Hildy is original, irresistibly likable and thoroughly untrustworthy. Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

one I can walk through a house once and know more about its occupants than a psychiatrist could after a year of sessions. I remember joking about this one evening with Peter Newbold, the shrink who rents the office upstairs from mine. "The next time you get a new patient," I offered, "I'll sneak to their house for a walk-through. While you jot down notes about their history, dreams, whatever, I'll shine a flashlight into the attic, open a few cupboards, and have a peek at the bedrooms. Later, when we compare notes, I'll have the clearer picture of the person's mental health, guaranteed." I was teasing the doctor, of course, but I've been selling houses since he was in primary school, and I stand by my theory. I like a house that looks lived in. General wear and tear is a healthy sign; a house that's too antiseptic speaks as much to me of domestic discord as a house in complete disarray. Alcoholics, hoarders, binge eaters, addicts, sexual deviants, philanderers, depressives--you name it, I can see it all in the worn edges of their nests. You catch the smoky reek of stale scotch and cigarettes despite the desperate abundance of vanilla-scented candles. The animal stench oozes up between the floorboards, even though the cat lady and her minions were removed months before. The marital bedroom that's become his, the cluttered guest room that's now clearly hers --well, you get the idea. I don't have to go inside the house to make a diagnosis; the curbside analysis is usually enough. The McAllister house is a perfect example. In fact, I'd love to compare my original observations regarding Rebecca McAllister with Peter. She was depressed, for one. I drove past the McAllisters' one morning in late May, not long after they'd moved in, and there she was, out in the early-morning haze, planting annuals all along the garden path. It wasn't even seven A.M., but it was clear that she had been at it for hours. She was in a rather sheer white nightshirt, which was damp with sweat and covered with soil. People were starting to drive by, but Rebecca had become so absorbed in her gardening that it apparently hadn't occurred to her to put on some proper clothes. I stopped and said hello from my car window. We chatted for a few minutes about the weather, about how the kids were adjusting to their new school, but as we talked, I sensed a sadness in the way Rebecca planted--a mournfulness, as if she were placing each seedling in a tiny plot, a tiny little grave. And they were bright red impatiens that she was planting. There's always something frantic about that kind of bold color choice for the front of a house. I said good-bye, and when I glanced back at Rebecca through my rearview mirror, it looked, from that distance, like there was a thin trail of blood leading all the way from the house to the spot where she knelt. "I told her I would do the planting, but she likes to do it herself," Linda Barlow, the McAllisters' landscaper, told me later that day at the post office. "I think she's lonely up there. I almost never see the husband." Linda knew I had sold them the house, and she seemed to imply that I had been derelict, somehow, in assuring the healthy acclimation of one of Wendover's newest treasures--the McAllisters. The "wonderful McAllisters," as Wendy Heatherton liked to call them. Wendy Heatherton and I had actually cobrokered the sale. I had the listing; Wendy, from Sotheby's, had the wonderful McAllisters. "It takes time," I said to Linda. "I guess," she replied. "Wendy Heatherton's having a party for them next weekend. They'll meet some nice people there." "Oh yeah, all the nice, fancy people." Linda laughed. "You going?" "I have to," I said. I was flipping through my mail. It was mostly bills. Bills and junk. "Is it hard going to parties for you? I mean ... now?" Linda touched my wrist gently and softened her voice when she said this. "What do you mean, 'now'?" I shot back. "Oh, nothing ... Hildy," she stammered. "Well, good night, Linda," I said, and turned so that she wouldn't see how red my face had become. Imagine Linda Barlow worrying about whether it's hard for me to go to parties. I hadn't seen poor Linda at a party since we were in high school. And the way she pitied Rebecca McAllister. Rebecca was married to one of the wealthiest men in New England, had two lovely children, and lived on an estate that had once belonged to Judge Raymond Barlow--Linda's own grandfather. Linda had grown up playing at that big old house, with those gorgeous views of the harbor and the islands, but, you know, the family money had run out, the property had exchanged hands a few times, and now Linda lived in an apartment above the pharmacy in Wendover Crossing. Rebecca paid Linda to tend to some of the very same heirloom perennials--the luscious peonies, the fragrant tea rose, lilac, and honeysuckle bushes, and all the bright beds of lilies, daffodils, and irises--that her own grandmother had planted there over half a century ago. So while it was laughable, really, that she might worry about me, it was positively absurd that she pitied Rebecca. I show homes to a lot of important people--politicians, doctors, lawyers, even the occasional celebrity--but the first time I saw Rebecca, the day I showed her the Barlow place, I have to admit, I was a little at a loss for words. A line from a poem that I had helped one of my daughters memorize for school, many years before, came to mind. I knew a woman, lovely in her bones. Rebecca was probably thirty or thirty-one at the time. I had Googled Brian McAllister before the showing and had expected to meet an older woman. People must think he's her father is what I thought then, except for the fact that there was something very wise and understanding about her face, a sort of serenity in her expression that women don't usually acquire until their kids are grown. Rebecca's hair is dark, almost black, and that morning it had been pulled up into a messy ponytail with a colorful little scarf around it, but it was easy to see that when she let it down, it was quite long and wavy. She shook my hand and smiled at me. She's one of those women who smiles mostly with her eyes, and her eyes appeared to be gray one minute, green the next. I guess it had to do with the light. She was a little thin then, but her whole frame is tiny, and she wasn't as gaunt as she later seemed. She was petite. She was beautiful. She moved in circles, and those circles moved , same poem, although I still don't recall the name of the poet, but she was one of those effortlessly graceful women who make you feel like an ogress if you stand too close. I'm not fat, but I could lose a few. Wendy Heatherton is slim, but she's had all sorts of liposuctioning and flesh tucking. I don't know who the hell she thought she was kidding when she was carrying on about that gallbladder operation a few years back. It's a well-known fact that the McAllisters had sunk a fortune into the yearlong renovation of the old Barlow place. Brian McAllister, for those who don't know, is one of the founders of R. E. Kerwin, one of the world's largest hedge funds. He grew up in the bottom of a three-decker in South Boston, with four brothers and a sister, and had become a billionaire before he turned fifty. Had he married somebody else, he probably would have been living in a mansion in Wellesley or Weston with a full staff, but he had married Rebecca, who, having grown up with a staff, and distant parents, liked to do things herself. How do I know so much about the McAllisters? It's not just from their house. I know pretty much everything that happens in this town. One way or another, it gets back to me. I'm an old townie; the eighth-great-granddaughter of Sarah Good, one of the accused witches tried and hanged in Salem. My clients love it when I drop that into a conversation. That I descend from the witch called, so delightfully and ironically, Goodwife Good. ( Yes, I always laugh with them, as if it had never occurred to me until they said it, Good ol' Goody Good, ha-ha. ) That and the fact that my family has been in Salem and here in nearby Wendover, Massachusetts, since the 1600s. My husband, Scott, used to tell me that I'd have been hanged as a witch myself had I lived in another time. He meant it as a sort of compliment, believe it or not, and it's true, I do rather fit the profile, especially now that I'm on the darker side of middle age. My first name is Hilda, which my children have always told me sounds like a witch's name, but I'm called Hildy. I live alone; my daughters are grown and my husband is no longer my husband. I talk to animals. I guess that would have been a red flag. And some people think I have powers of intuition, psychic powers, which I don't. I just know a few tricks. I have a certain type of knowledge when it comes to people and, like I said, I tend to know everybody's business. Well, I make it my business to know everybody's business. I'm the top real-estate agent in a town whose main industries are antiques and real estate. It used to be shipbuilding and clams, but the last boatyard in Wendover closed down more than thirty years ago. Now, those of us who aren't living off brand-new hedge-fund money are selling inflated waterfront properties to those who are. You can still clam here--the tidal marsh down by Getchell's Cove is a good spot--but you can't make your living off clams anymore. Even the clams at Clem's Famous Fried Clams are poured into those dark vats of grease from freezer bags shipped down from Nova Scotia. No, the best way to make money up here now is through real estate: the selling, managing, improving, and maintaining of these priceless waterfront acres that used to be marshland and farms but that were recently described in Boston magazine as "the North Shore's New Gold Coast." Brian McAllister happens to own Boston magazine. The day we met, after I showed him his future house, he pointed to a copy of it folded up on the seat next to me in the car and said, "Hey, that's my magazine you got there, Hildy." "Really? Oh well, take it. My copy must be around here someplace." "No." Brian laughed. "I own it. Boston mag. I'm the publisher. Bought it last year with a friend." You're a wicked big deal, a real hotshot is what I thought. I hate rich people. Well, I'm doing all right myself these days, but I hate all the other rich people. "It's one of my favorite magazines," I said. I was showing him a two-million-dollar house, after all, a house that I knew his wife had already gutted and restored in her mind; had mentally painted and furnished and plumbed and wired and dramatically lit during the few short days since I had shown it to her. "I bet we can give you a special advertising rate in the real-estate section, if you want," Brian said. "That would be great, Brian, thanks," I said. And I hated him a little bit less. Copyright © 2012 by Ann Leary Excerpted from The Good House by Ann Leary All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.