I think this well acclaimed book would be better without a paranormal element. My book group had a rollicking discussion about it last night, and it was the people who enjoy ghost stories that loved it. Me, if I had known it had spirits and the living dead in it, I would not have read it. So while I thought in good faith I was reading a real good one to recommend to you, I’m sending this post along with a warning, even though a lot of people loved it enough to want to read it again.

The premise is a good one, about the stories that took place in a house over the centuries. I wish it would have stayed with that theme as sufficient, instead of including those phantasms and apparitions accumulating as time went on. By the end, I found that gimmicky distraction excruciating.

However, the book’s structure and writing is amazing. For example, there is a section on bug sex that proves his prowess as a communicator of top rank. So overlooking my main objections of the paranormal, and all the rampant mental health issues, the multiple murders, and unfaithfulness, there were parts to enjoy.

I liked that a button lost in one century was found in the next, and that a botanist was hired years later by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to identify the plants in the paintings that were painted on the land around the house. I listened to this book on audio, and thought all ten narrators did a wonderful job.

If this is award winning fiction right now, it is really a commentary on how much more uplift our society needs, as if we needed any more proof. Only read this book if you want to suspend your disbelief and are ready for some really weird or heinous twists, let alone a decline into the apocalypse. Hopefully I’ll read something soon that I can recommend to you wholeheartedly.