Ashton Hall A novel

Lauren Belfer

Book - 2022

"A frustrated academic still reeling from her husband's betrayal moves into Ashton Hall with her young son and tries to come up with answers after they discover the remains of a woman walled into a forgotten part of the manor"--

Saved in:
1 person waiting

1st Floor Show me where

FICTION/Belfer Lauren
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
1st Floor FICTION/Belfer Lauren Checked In
Subjects
Genres
Detective and mystery fiction
Historical fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Ballantine Books [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Lauren Belfer (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
397 pages : illustration ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 390-393).
ISBN
9780593359495
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Belfer's (And After the Fire, 2016) first fully contemporary work may seem a departure for the acclaimed historical novelist, but she hasn't left the past behind. Her exquisitely illuminated story offers the vicarious indulgence of a stay at an English country house combined with an Elizabethan-era mystery and a meditation on women's age-old struggles between independence and motherhood. Circumstances involving a beloved, ill relative bring American Hannah Larson and her neurodivergent nine-year-old son, Nicky, to Ashton Hall, near Cambridge. Exploring the manor's long-abandoned upper floors, Nicky discovers a woman's skeleton. She had been sealed into her room, alongside a prie-dieu or prayer desk, books, and other comforts. Was she imprisoned, or had she lived there willingly? This isn't a standard Gothic tale of suspense; there are no supernatural elements. But this mystery does haunt Hannah. While contemplating her husband's infidelity and her lack of financial autonomy and grappling with Nicky's difficult behavior, Hannah reassembles the woman's life and times via centuries-old letters, household accounts, and library records with the help of new friends. Belfer shows how history is a tangibly close presence.

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

In the well-crafted latest from Belfer (And After the Fire), Manhattan art historian Hannah Larson puts her career on hold to give her son, Nicky, who suffers from violent outbursts, the constant care he needs. When Hannah's uncle invites her and Nicky to spend the summer in England, she's just discovered that her husband, Kevin, is having an affair, and welcomes the respite from marital tensions. Hannah and nine-year-old Nicky are fascinated by Ashton Hall, the ancient Cambridgeshire manor in which her uncle leases an apartment. Exploring an abandoned wing, Nicky discovers a skeleton in a room that's walled up except for a single small opening. The body is identified as that of Isabella Cresham, a late--16th-century member of the family that once owned the Hall, and some of the artifacts found nearby suggest that Isabella was a Catholic despite her era's brutal religious strictures. Hannah, herself feeling trapped due to financial dependence on Kevin, who refuses to end his affair, is drawn to Isabella's story. As she gleans details of Isabella's life from sketchbooks and ledgers found in another room in the house, she struggles to chart her own future. Without slipping into country house clichés or simplistic parallels, Belfer offers a nuanced exploration of the ways women's lives are constricted. Anglophiles and Tudor history buffs will enjoy this immersive tale. (June)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A woman's attempts to uncover an archaeological mystery lead to a bigger discovery: herself. Hannah Larson and her 9-year-old son, Nicky, have packed up their Upper West Side bags and moved into Ashton Hall, a stately manor near Cambridge, England. They were intending to keep Christopher, Hannah's honorary uncle, company while he undergoes cancer treatment, but unbeknownst to Hannah, he has made other plans to get care in New York City. Thus Hannah has Christopher's apartment to herself, as well as the time and space to work on her long-put-aside dissertation and to contemplate her husband's betrayals. That is until Nicky, a quirky child with troubling outbursts of violence, makes a shocking discovery: Hidden away in an enclosed room in the walls of Ashton Hall is a redheaded skeleton. A team of archaeologists descend on the manor to learn more about the skeleton, whom they discover lived in the 1500s and is named Isabella Cresham: "Isabella Cresham has never been a ghost, haunting us," one of the manor's other residents says to Hannah. "Tells you something about ghosts. If you don't fear their presence, they leave you alone. We'll see if she starts haunting us now." Hannah, clearly haunted from the moment she lays eyes on Isabella, begins to see parallels between their lives as she deals with the nagging question: Did Isabella choose this life, or was she locked away? Hannah pours over Isabella's sketchbooks and letters, piecing together Isabella's life while interweaving her own anxieties and dreams into Isabella's story. The first third of the book drags, and somehow the discovery of a skeleton in a hidden room is the least compelling part of the entire novel. That said, its strength comes from the archaeological details (did you know that the pigment that creates red hair is the slowest to break down?) as well as the grace and attention given to both Hannah and Isabella--two women separated by hundreds of years but bound by a common humanity. A touching story about the themes that resonate through centuries. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

CHAPTER 1 On a Sunday morning in late June, I waited with my son at the side entrance of a stately home near Cambridge, England. We stood on a stone bridge that spanned what was once a moat, the water drained, a grassy pathway beckoning at the bottom, the moat's walls overgrown with greenery. "Seven fifty-four A.M.," Nicky said, reading from his phone. He was nine years old. I rotated the lever that controlled the bell. The sound grated within. Metalwork vines covered the cracked wooden door. Above me, the panes of the broad mullioned windows were like multifaceted mirrors, reflecting fragments of gray-bottomed clouds and blue sky. The house, dating from the early 1600s, was a red-brick extravaganza of turrets, chimneys, and Flemish gables. Cream-colored limestone outlined the windows and doorways. Statues of cows, pigs, and sheep, whimsical barnyard gargoyles, stared down at me from the gutters. Ever since the eleventh century, a home had stood here. This was my third try with the doorbell. I now had reason to worry that Christopher wasn't going to answer. He was old, he was ill, he was dead. Fallen to the bottom of the stairs in a heap. Collapsed on the kitchen floor. Peacefully slipping away while asleep in his bed--the option I wished for him, for his sake and my own, because I loved him and didn't want him to suffer. "Seven fifty-five A.M.," Nicky said. What next? I turned away from the door. The garden spread before us, sparkling in the morning sun, saturated with color, the rising terraces culminating in a tempietto, a round, open colonnade covered by a dome, at the top of a hillock. At the perimeter of the garden, thickly planted trees created a wash of green dotted by the darker copper beeches. The breeze was a moist caress upon my skin. The air carried a scent of lavender. I know a bank where the wild thyme blows--the line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream came into my mind. A shower had passed through shortly before, and the paths were damp. The flowering fuchsia along the moat dripped with raindrops, glowing in the sunlight. Off to my left, behind the house and across the rain-drenched lawns, an incandescent mist rose from the ornamental lake. "Seven fifty-six A.M." Christopher had arranged for a car and driver to meet us at Heathrow after our flight from New York, to bring us here, and leave us here. And here we remained, surrounded by luggage, on a bridge over a moat at the side entrance of a Jacobean mansion, with no one answering the door. Nicky pressed his head against my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. He was growing so fast. How young and adorable he looked, at this moment of calm. In front of the house, the estate's original farm buildings, also red brick with limestone trim and a series of Flemish gables, framed a ceremonial approach to the mansion's formal entrance. These accommodated a cafe, visitors' center, and secondhand bookshop. At ten o'clock, they would open to the public, along with the gardens. At noon, the mansion's historic rooms would open. Was that the aroma of fresh coffee, wafting on the air from the cafe? Of brownies baking? Definitely. Go find help. I should have been striding to the visitors' center. "Seven fifty-seven A.M." I couldn't make myself move, jet lag triumphant. "A dog is barking." Nicky disengaged himself from me. He frowned, listening. Insects buzzed, birds sang, bringing the air to life. I didn't hear a dog. Nicky studied the woods near the lake. I studied his hazel eyes, his dark brows, his straight brown hair, cut in a bowl style. "It's coming closer. I bet it's Duncan." Duncan was Christopher's dog. "Do you hear him now?" "I wish I did." "What the f*** is wrong with you? Do you need f***ing hearing aids?" His words stunned me, even though I'd heard such language often enough from him before. No one spoke to Nicky this way--not me, not his father, not his teachers. Yet this was the way he spoke to us. I was worn down from the effort of keeping myself prepared to respond to his outbursts. "Watch your tone! Watch your language." "Sorry." He sounded contrite. As usual, I couldn't judge whether he truly was contrite or had said what he needed to say to avoid punishment. "Look!" he said. Bounding from the woods near the ornamental lake--Duncan, a cream-colored golden retriever, raced across the lawn. Christopher emerged from a woodland path, too, bent over his cane, picking his way forward. Beside him, a well-muscled man kept a hand on Christopher's elbow. With a respect obvious from a distance, his T-shirt and jeans transformed into the most professional of uniforms, the man guided Christopher along the path. "Duncan, Duncan!" Nicky was gone from my side. As I walked toward the two men, dread slowed my steps. I didn't want to see what Christopher's illness had done to him. He was in his late eighties and suffering from a type of cancer whose details he refused to discuss. The nasties, he called it, in his way of brushing off matters of greatest concern. "And a fine good morning to you," Christopher called as I approached. His voice was hoarse. Once, he'd stood straight, his bearing dignified and patrician. Now he was shrunken, his skin blotchy, his eyes hollow. Nonetheless, he was dressed for a better world, or his view of a better world: white flannel trousers, paisley ascot, blue linen jacket, straw boater. Keeping up appearances--the only defense against the nasties, or anything else, as he might say. I hugged him. His bones were sharp, from his weight loss. His hand trembled as he patted my back. When we separated, he swayed. He clutched his aide's arm. He made an effort to breathe and to smile. "Allow me to introduce Rafe Connors, my assistant in life's daily rituals and travails. Rafe, this is Hannah Larson, my honorary niece." "Good morning," Rafe said. We shook hands. He looked about thirty-five, his short-clipped hair receding. Tattooed images of angel wings encircled his arms. "Mr. Eckersley has spoken of you." Rafe's brogue sounded Scottish, and his voice was surprisingly gentle for his tough-guy physique. I wanted to clutch Rafe's arm, too, to help me negotiate the gap between the Christopher I remembered and the man I faced today. "I trust your journey has done you no lingering harm," Christopher said. "How marvelous to welcome you"--he gestured in the direction of the house--"to this, my humble abode." Excerpted from Ashton Hall: A Novel by Lauren Belfer 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.