The ruins

It's summer at the Château des Sètes, and the Ashbys are hosting their annual series of guests. Ruby is a quiet 12-year-old girl who wants to read Agatha Christie and swim in the pool without too much fuss from her two visiting friends. Unfortunately, the adults' petty barbs, ugly insults, and dark, not-so-closeted skeletons are determined to make this summer a disaster. The adults in Wynne's novel are self-absorbed elites swimming in privilege and neglecting their children. Ruby, Annie, and Imogen aren't allowed to be young; they hear and understand much more than the adults notice they do and are subjected to the terrors of sexual abuse at the hands of men. Wynne deals frankly with the young girls' experiences and trauma--the increasing, silent terror that the girls experience through the gaze, hands, and laps of fully grown men, their inability to put it into words, and the failure of all of the adults around them to stop it. While the book has some issues in execution, Wynne succeeds in delivering a painful psychological thriller where the horror emanates from the power of rich men.

Against the backdrop of an aging French chateau, Wynne (Madam) offers the dark and befuddling tale of a group of English girls in the summer of 1985, one of whom revisits the scene 25 years later when the chateau is up for sale. Ruby Ashby, nearly 12, awaits another idyllic summer in her family's vacation manse when three university friends of her father Toby arrive with their daughters, and things go awry. The girls are bombarded with lascivious remarks by the two men--one crosses a line by coercing Ruby to sit on his lap, another gropes her. Tension ratchets up when Toby's former university love arrives with her provocative 17-year-old daughter, Ned, who has a penchant for Latin classics and likens the chateau's male guests to different classical characters. Wynne packs the plot with jealousies, class rivalries, emotional and physical abuse, and accidental deaths--not to mention the endless sparring amongst the former university colleagues. One of the girls from the fateful summer returns in 2010 as a widow considering purchasing the chateau, but her identity is hidden until late in the book, a decision that comes off as frustrating rather than suspenseful. The author then cobbles together a perplexing ending, further derailing the promising premise. This confused coming-of-age story misses the mark. (July)

Ruby Ashby has always loved the Chateau des Sètes, her parents' gorgeous away-from-England home, located on the Cote d'Azur. But this August, strange things are happening--unexpected guests arrive, children are left untended, and Ruby starts feeling trapped. Two decades later, she arrives at the house as a young widow, intent on repurchasing it and reclaiming its glory days despite its subsequent terrible history. But someone else wants it, too. From the author of Madam; with a 75,000-copy first printing.