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Lucy Culpepper, an orphan pianist with a heart condition and crossed incisors that make her look like a squirrel, was raised by her asshole uncle who squanders her inheritance. All she wants is to study piano from a dying pianist in England, but she can't afford to go... until said asshole uncle sends her on a wild goose chase to see if her ninety-something great-aunt Fenella, an unrecognized genius outsider artist who does painted/embroidered/multimedia Biblical paintings, is actually dead and someone else is cashing her minuscule pension checks.
Lucy goes and meets the dying pianist, and they fall in love. They then spend the entire book apart as he's too sick to travel and she's trying to track down her great-aunt, who lived her whole life with another woman who recently died falling off a cliff. Or maybe her great-aunt is dead and being impersonated by her partner. Or maybe it is the great-aunt pretending to impersonate her partner! A farrago of bizarre events follows, including many strangely charming meetings with a Turkish doctor (unless he's just pretending to be Turkish), several old people's homes, a trio of escaped convicts, a cat everyone wants to kill (which does get killed, FYI), a cat that may or may not have died years ago, and a live cat that may or may not be the killed-by-a-fox-years-ago cat.
I almost forgot to mention that Lucy becomes psychic when she has a migraine.
I'm calling this a Gothic because it was published as one and the cover depicts a woman fleeing a menacing house. However, as I guessed before reading it based on the author, it's actually very hard to categorize generically, is both very funny and very dark, and parodies everything from Gothics to British food to outsider artists to seductive Turks in romances to the sort of idyllic English towns also parodied in Cold Comfort Farm, which this book also slightly resembles. In fact I'm sure it contains many parodies that I didn't catch as I'm unfamiliar with the originals.
I enjoyed this a lot. It's funny, sad, and very very strange. Also very very Joan Aiken.
I am going to quote ALL the Goodreads reviews of this book, including one mostly in German, because all of them together give you a good idea of what it's like to read this book:
Three stars. What a strange novel. It drew me in immediately, and left me thinking after I finished it.
One star. So terrible.
Three stars. Such an odd book this, but written well...Joan Aiken is impressive. I wish I could have had a chance to hear her speak about her books and to ask her some questions. I do very much like definitive answers. lol. One thing is for sure, it is not the kind of novel that I forgot about the next day when moving on to my next. In this respect, she achieved something that other gothic novelists are not known for doing. Get to the ending yourself and we will "talk". :)
Four stars. ich würde auch 5 sterne geben wenn das ende nicht so...so...so "wait what? wtfh???" gewesen wäre. an sich war das buch toll, sehr leichtfüßig und spannend geschrieben, die netten charaktere waren sympathisch und die bösen böse wie es sich gehört. aber das ende, man, man, man.
So, the ending. The villains' efforts to steal the paintings cause the reservoir to break and a flood drowns the paintings, them, and possibly most of the town. Lucy has a heart attack and dies listening her beloved dying pianist play over the radio. It's implied that he'll die of shock when he hears of this. The ancient aunt is still alive, and in the very last line declines to say which one she really is.
Lucy goes and meets the dying pianist, and they fall in love. They then spend the entire book apart as he's too sick to travel and she's trying to track down her great-aunt, who lived her whole life with another woman who recently died falling off a cliff. Or maybe her great-aunt is dead and being impersonated by her partner. Or maybe it is the great-aunt pretending to impersonate her partner! A farrago of bizarre events follows, including many strangely charming meetings with a Turkish doctor (unless he's just pretending to be Turkish), several old people's homes, a trio of escaped convicts, a cat everyone wants to kill (which does get killed, FYI), a cat that may or may not have died years ago, and a live cat that may or may not be the killed-by-a-fox-years-ago cat.
I almost forgot to mention that Lucy becomes psychic when she has a migraine.
I'm calling this a Gothic because it was published as one and the cover depicts a woman fleeing a menacing house. However, as I guessed before reading it based on the author, it's actually very hard to categorize generically, is both very funny and very dark, and parodies everything from Gothics to British food to outsider artists to seductive Turks in romances to the sort of idyllic English towns also parodied in Cold Comfort Farm, which this book also slightly resembles. In fact I'm sure it contains many parodies that I didn't catch as I'm unfamiliar with the originals.
I enjoyed this a lot. It's funny, sad, and very very strange. Also very very Joan Aiken.
I am going to quote ALL the Goodreads reviews of this book, including one mostly in German, because all of them together give you a good idea of what it's like to read this book:
Three stars. What a strange novel. It drew me in immediately, and left me thinking after I finished it.
One star. So terrible.
Three stars. Such an odd book this, but written well...Joan Aiken is impressive. I wish I could have had a chance to hear her speak about her books and to ask her some questions. I do very much like definitive answers. lol. One thing is for sure, it is not the kind of novel that I forgot about the next day when moving on to my next. In this respect, she achieved something that other gothic novelists are not known for doing. Get to the ending yourself and we will "talk". :)
Four stars. ich würde auch 5 sterne geben wenn das ende nicht so...so...so "wait what? wtfh???" gewesen wäre. an sich war das buch toll, sehr leichtfüßig und spannend geschrieben, die netten charaktere waren sympathisch und die bösen böse wie es sich gehört. aber das ende, man, man, man.
So, the ending. The villains' efforts to steal the paintings cause the reservoir to break and a flood drowns the paintings, them, and possibly most of the town. Lucy has a heart attack and dies listening her beloved dying pianist play over the radio. It's implied that he'll die of shock when he hears of this. The ancient aunt is still alive, and in the very last line declines to say which one she really is.
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Very pleased about the great-aunt-or-possibly-her-girlfriend who survives till the last page, too!
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What's your pick for the most cracktastic Aiken plot?
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And ABSOLUTELY the Jane Austen fanfic in which Lady Catherine de Bourgh gets stranded on a rock with a depressed sailor/poet/prophet while Anne de Bourgh makes friends with the gay painters down the road!
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Echoing the reviews,
How is that even a plot?
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Re: Echoing the reviews,
Crying with laughter!
It's nice to see quality batshittery. None of this half-assed extruded goth product for the discerning connoisseur! ❤
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