54th out of 177 books
—
186 voters
More Than You Know
In a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine, an old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story: "Somebody said 'true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.' I've seen both and I don't know how to tell you which is worse." Hannah has decided, finally, to leave a record of the passionate and anguished long-ago summer in Dundee when she met C...more
Paperback, 269 pages
Published
April 10th 2001
by William Morrow Paperbacks
(first published January 1st 2000)
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Apr 27, 2012
Hannah
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Hannah by:
Margaret
Shelves:
2012-reads,
spookies
Struggling to rate this book fairly.
On the one hand, the writing was top notch; really superior (5 stars for that alone). On the other hand, the actual ghost story was anticlimatic and underwhelming for my taste. Namely, I was expecting a more horrific "umph" from the ghost; more chills, goosebumps and a keep-the-lights-on kind of feeling. Some readers got that from this book, but for me it wasn't there. Perhaps it was too nuanced for my taste - I think I need a more direct approach when it come...more
On the one hand, the writing was top notch; really superior (5 stars for that alone). On the other hand, the actual ghost story was anticlimatic and underwhelming for my taste. Namely, I was expecting a more horrific "umph" from the ghost; more chills, goosebumps and a keep-the-lights-on kind of feeling. Some readers got that from this book, but for me it wasn't there. Perhaps it was too nuanced for my taste - I think I need a more direct approach when it come...more
I finished this book last night. It took me a few chapters to get into it because books that go back and forth chapter to chapter between what at first seems like two unrelated stories kind of get on my nerves. Then, I stayed up way to late last night reading the whole thing because I got so engrossed in the story. It was so scary that after I finished reading it I got up and turned the hallway light on to sleep. I guess that this book was a mystery but it wasn’t one it kept you guessing “who du...more
I read this a few years ago because my local library was reading it for their bookclub. Too bad I ended up missing the meeting because I deperately wanted to talk about it. It's part journey story and part ghost story, which at first was distracting as it moved back and forth between the two. But as one does when watching a movie with subtitles, I adjusted and soon became caught up in the story, especially as the two stories began to merge. This is one I really want to read again.
As I stated in my profile, I enjoy historical paranormal mysteries, and this is one of the best I've read in a long time. It is a murder mystery, a ghost story, and a romance set on the coast of Maine. It is also a tale of love turned to hatred; blame nurtured while responsibility is ignored; sad children and poor parenting. Told from the point of view of an old woman reminiscing about young love, the story weaves between the time of her youth, the depression era, and that of a troubled girl fro...more
1. MY EXPECTATIONS
(a) a Lovely Bones-type of thriller featuring
(i) a small town murder
(ii) dark family secrets
(iii) and a chilling conclusion
2. WHAT I RECEIVED
(a) an angst-ridden, watery, historical gothic with
(i) unlikable characters from families who don't love them
(ii) ill-conceived romances that were doomed to fail from the start
(iii) ambiguous phenomena that could be ghosts but could also be insanity
b) and not a single madwoman in the attic to show for it!
I'm not quite sure what to say abou...more
(a) a Lovely Bones-type of thriller featuring
(i) a small town murder
(ii) dark family secrets
(iii) and a chilling conclusion
2. WHAT I RECEIVED
(a) an angst-ridden, watery, historical gothic with
(i) unlikable characters from families who don't love them
(ii) ill-conceived romances that were doomed to fail from the start
(iii) ambiguous phenomena that could be ghosts but could also be insanity
b) and not a single madwoman in the attic to show for it!
I'm not quite sure what to say abou...more
I probably should have saved this one for Halloween. It's a combination of love story and ghost story. The narrator. Hannah, is also the main character, and she is telling her story in retrospect. When she was a young girl, probably between 16 and 18, her father sent her and her stepmother and brother to spend the summer in a small coastal town in Maine. They live in a restored school house that turns out to be haunted. She is the only one in her family who can see the ghost and her stepmother b...more
We had book club last week and discussed Beth Gutcheon's More Than You Know. It was a spooky ghost story set on the coast of Maine, jumping from the 20th century to the 19th. An old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story by saying "Somebody said 'true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, and few have seen.' I've seen both, and I don't know how to tell you which is worse." Hannah tells the story of her youthful love affair and the appearance of a ghost in their lives that shatters t...more
This is a ghost story and love story all rolled into one. A tale about life coming full circle on itself. The chapters alternate between the storyteller, Hannah and the history of a family that touches Hannah’s life one summer in a small town in Maine.
The history starts in the early 1800s when Claris Osgood is 10 years old and already feels completely different than her close, loving family members. She meets a boy named Danial Haskell and they fall in love. They marry against the Osgood’s wishe...more
The history starts in the early 1800s when Claris Osgood is 10 years old and already feels completely different than her close, loving family members. She meets a boy named Danial Haskell and they fall in love. They marry against the Osgood’s wishe...more
I had never seen or heard about this book or author until I picked it up in St. Paul over Christmas, and I am thrilled that I did!
"More Than You Know" is both a love story and a thriller. It's also two parallel stories, the Osgood/Haskell family in the late 1800s, and Hannah's, an old woman telling her story of being a teen in the 30s.
Their stories are intertwined because of an unhappy family who haunt an island, a town, and a house. Both stories are also linked through unhappy marriages, thwar...more
"More Than You Know" is both a love story and a thriller. It's also two parallel stories, the Osgood/Haskell family in the late 1800s, and Hannah's, an old woman telling her story of being a teen in the 30s.
Their stories are intertwined because of an unhappy family who haunt an island, a town, and a house. Both stories are also linked through unhappy marriages, thwar...more
I don't seek out ghost stories, but this one accidentally sucked me in since I didn't really read the dust jacket very thoroughly. The chapters alternate between a long time ago (unless I missed something, it wasn't completely clear until about two-thirds of the way through that this part took place in the late 1930s) and a really, really long time ago (mid-1800s). I can see I'm doing a bang-up job of describing it. Well, I'm not actually sure what to say about it, but it was hard to put down, a...more
More than you know is a love story, or make that multiple love stories, told by the elderly 20th century woman, Hannah Gray. Hannah revisits the summer home town of her youth, Dundee, Maine to tell the story of her own first love and adventures with the wild hometown boy, Conary Crocker. It is during this summer love that Hannah learns first hand that the past can have a profound affect on the present. Hannah and Conary are both witnesses to an apparition and in seeking information about the tow...more
Hannah Gray is an elderly woman who tells the story about one particular summer, long ago, that she spent in Dundee, Maine. Hannah tells about her relationship with the town bad boy, Conary Crocker.
The story flips back and forth between 50 years ago during Hannah's time on the island and present. Hannah also tells the story about the past life of Claris Osgood and Danial Haskell who married back then against Claris's families wishes. Claris learns later that she should have listened to her famil...more
The story flips back and forth between 50 years ago during Hannah's time on the island and present. Hannah also tells the story about the past life of Claris Osgood and Danial Haskell who married back then against Claris's families wishes. Claris learns later that she should have listened to her famil...more
This book should serve as the blueprint for how *all* ghost stories should be written. At least one of the main characters should be the restless spirit in question and at least show glimpses of how they once lived. Part of the thrill of any quality ghost fiction should be watching the path of the spirit's untimely death as its former existence is slowly revealed. The ghost should be a mysterious creature that doesn't communicate easily with the living character's conscious state of mind; otherw...more
"Marry in haste, repent at leisure." This certainly held true for Claris Osgood when she married Danial Haskell in the 1850's and lived with him on the isolated Beal Island. Danial turned out to be a bitter, strict and insensitive man. Claris was isolated both emotionally and physically and eventually became just as bitter as he, especially after the death of their beloved son, Amos. Daughter, Sallie, could never measure up in her mother's eyes. It was a horrible situation that ended in murder.
I...more
I...more
This gets a 4 only because there is one part of this book I found truly terrifying. I mean, girl crawling at you in The Ring scary. Since books that are billed as "ghost stories" rarely have anything even remotely creepy about them, I can respect that is creepy in a couple parts. Other than that, the book is two stories from different eras that are loosely connected to each other, and I vastly preferred the story from the nineteen hundreds to the one that was more modern (fifties or sixties). Oh...more
Hannah Gray, an elderly woman, returns to the house she summered in as a young woman and decides to tell us the story of the summer she spent falling in love and being terrorized by a ghost. Her story is separated by the story of a family who lived on the island across from Hannah's old summer house over 100 years prior to that fatefull summer. The love story is intense and unforgettable, the ghost story is scary as all get out(the scene with the ghost in the rocking chair kept me awake the nig...more
Hannah Gray has been in love and seen ghosts and she doesn't know which is worse. On the coast of Maine, a small town and an even smaller island are the setting for two stories - that of the Haskells and that of Hannah. Which story is more tragic? It's all in what you believe...
I was not loving this for the first 75 pages or so. I thought it was kind of boring and not as interesting as the description had me believe. However, the story (or stories, if you will) picked up after that and it became...more
I was not loving this for the first 75 pages or so. I thought it was kind of boring and not as interesting as the description had me believe. However, the story (or stories, if you will) picked up after that and it became...more
I got into this book pretty fast, and found it was hard to put down. I liked the alternating storys, with the Haskells in the past and the old lady telling her story. When I finished it though, I felt like I was unsatisfied, I didn't get enough of either storyline, and that's what I didn't like most. I was fascinated by the chapters set in the 1800s and I would have loved to be able to delve deeper into that side of the story. More development of those characters could've made the story better,...more
Until yesterday, I had never read a book written by this author. I must say I became so enthralled in the story that I read the whole book in one sitting. It is a haunting love story, mysterious ghost story, and a chronicle of several related families' history of tragedy and heartbreak. Since the setting is in Maine, that also was a huge factor in its favor, as Maine is one of my favorite areas in the States. The author writes lyrical, lovely, and sad prose all at the same time. This story truly...more
Told in part by a first-person narrator reflecting on events that occured in the 1930s and in part by an omniscient narrator detailing events that took place nearly a century earlier, this ghost story is as bleak as the Maine coast in which it is set. The word I would use to describe it is "unsettling"--not just because of its dark subject matter, but because some of its deepest mysteries remain, by the time the last page is turned, mysteries. That is not necessarily a bad thing (think Turn of t...more
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The book switches back and forth between two time periods and at first is was hard to follow. After a few chapters you begin to realize the importance of the two stories to one another and the book begins to pick up. The writing is wonderful and the anticipation of the ghost story keeps your interest. I was hoping the revelation of the ghost would have been a little more exciting. That being said, it's a great book with a strong storyline.
The characters are complex and intriguing, and you alway...more
The characters are complex and intriguing, and you alway...more
Although very well written- ultimately I did not care much for this book. The only reason for that is that there was no closure or redemption at the end. Bad things happen to people, the people turn bitter and rotten, they do more bad things and those last into the future causing more pain- the end. No chance for the cycle to be broken, no point trying? It was creepy for sure and there was a chance for more there but the author had her reasons for not doing anything redeptive or even interesting...more
I chose this book because it was set in Maine. It is two love stories set in two different centuries. But more than that it is a study of the people who live on the coast of Maine. The author did a great job of capturing the essence of not only those people but what their lives were like. I enjoyed the book not because of the "ghost story" aspect but because of this great portrayal of the people of Maine.
After adjusting to the "back and forth" of the story lines, I found this book to be engaging...more
After adjusting to the "back and forth" of the story lines, I found this book to be engaging...more
This book was haunting and I'm not just saying that because there's a ghost in the book. There are two narratives going on here: one is an old woman reflecting on her youth during the Great Depression. The other is a story detailing events from the 1860s. Both stories are set in the same place and they are intertwined. I liked the fact that both stories were historical. However, the characters are very melancholy and the stories are quite sad. Still, it intrigued me and I didn't want to put the...more
>"Somebody once said, 'True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.' I've seen both, and I don't know how to tell which is worse."
This is the opening statement in the best book I've read all year. More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon is a captivating and altogether different sort of story. It is a novel of alternating narratives, set a century apart, raising the level of suspense as the characters in each period approach monumental turning points in their lives, in...more
This is the opening statement in the best book I've read all year. More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon is a captivating and altogether different sort of story. It is a novel of alternating narratives, set a century apart, raising the level of suspense as the characters in each period approach monumental turning points in their lives, in...more
This was my first (or at least the fist I can recall) venture into Beth Gutcheron's writing. I found the flow and pacing fit my mood exactly. The interweaving of two back-stories with present day was a nice touch, though I must admit, it took me a bit to realize there were different typefaces for the stories. I was too absorbed in the tale to notice those niceties. I haven't been to the Maine coastline since I was a girl, but Gutcheon carried me there in the descriptions. Somehow I get the feeli...more
This is a great little story and very well written. It combines a love story, a murder mystery and a ghost story thrown in as well. I really liked it and kept on reading just to find out what was going to happen. I love that I didn't have to keep plodding along when I knew perfectly well what would happen like I often do with the Beverly Lewis books. It is set on the cold coast of Maine and on a nearby island which is a good thing to think about when you are almost into summer in Arizona.
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Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She was educated at Harvard where she took an honors BA in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine. In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Ac...more
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“I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.”
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17 people liked it
“I wanted this day, the perfect buttery sun like peach ice cream, the speed, the satin leather of the car seat, the fair. Forbidden fruit, a day like no other. ”
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4 people liked it
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Apr 24, 2012 05:29am
Apr 24, 2012 05:32am