Challenge Tuesday – 14

I’m going to be very concise tonight as it’s my husband’s birthday and I’ve snuck off to write this post!

This week’s book is another of my nan’s old ones.

Book 14 – The Marriage Chest, by Dorothy Eden. I picked this one in part because the cover had a drawing of a very pensive young woman on it.  The story follows Emily Bowman as she looks to escape her life in the UK following an accident that ends her dream of being a concert pianist.  She travels to Spain to live with her cousin, Hannah.

Hannah was suspected of being responsible for Emily’s aunt Dolly’s death some years earlier, and Emily soon finds herself tangled up in a story whose consequences reach out across Hannah’s whole life.

This book wasn’t scary, psychological or even particularly mysterious, but it was quite absorbing.  It was an exploration of how far people will go to get what they want, and how much people can bear before they try to change what has been done.  It was oddly compelling to see how matter of fact Emily could be about the misfortune of others, when she herself began the story mourning her own lost dreams.

I think the writer was striving for a spooky, eerie atmosphere (certainly if the quotes on the cover are to be believed) but the book didn’t have that for me.  The insular family group, however, provided a sense of claustrophobia and a feeling of stunted self-development which was revisited as a theme a few times.  The ending was fairly predictable in one sense but in another the responses by the various parties were quite refreshingly unexpected.

All in all, it was what I’d call a wallpaper book: it didn’t take a lot of attention, it’s the kind of book you might read on holiday sitting on a beach, and you’d probably only read it once because the story twists won’t work again.

Nothing wrong with that though, we all have a few stashed away!

Happy reading,

EJ

🙂