House of Trelawney

From the author of The Improbability of Love a dazzling novel both satirical and moving, about an eccentric, dysfunctional family of English aristocrats, and their crumbling stately home that reminds us how the lives and hopes of women can still be shaped by the ties of family and love.

For more than 700 years, the vast, rambling Trelawney Castle in Cornwall--turrets, follies, a room for every day of the year, four miles of corridors and 500,000 acres--was the magnificent and grand "three dimensional calling card" of the Earls of Trelawney. By 2008, it is in a complete state of ruin due to the dulled ambition and the financial ineptitude of the twenty-four earls, two world wars, the Wall Street crash, and inheritance taxes. Still: the heir to all of it, Kitto, his wife Jane, their three children, their dog, Kitto's ancient parents, and his aunt Tuffy Scott, an entomologist who studies fleas, all manage to live there and keep it going. Three women dominate the story: Jane; Kitto's sister, the spinster, Blaze, who left Trelawney and made a killing in finance in London, and the wildly beautiful, seductive, and long-ago banished Anastasia whose 19 year old daughter, Ayesha-- a complete replica of her mother--arrives unannounced at Trelawney. When Ayesha marries very well and buys the house to avenge her mother's memory, she makes Blaze's plan to save Trelawney completely unnecessary. But both Blaze and Jane are about to discover that the house itself is really only a very small part of what keeps the family together.

De la autorul The Improbability of Love, un roman orbitor, atat satiric, cat si emotionant, despre o familie excentrica, disfunctionala, de aristocrati englezi, si casa lor domneasca prabusita, care ne aminteste cum viata si sperantele femeilor pot fi inca modelate de legaturile familiale si iubire. De mai bine de 700 de ani, vastul si plin de viata Castelul Trelawney din Cornwall - turnulete, nebunii, o camera pentru fiecare zi a anului, patru mile de coridoare si 500.000 de acri - a fost magnifica si grandioasa „carte de vizita tridimensionala” a contii de Trelawney.