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Jan 06, 2010

Miriam rated it:

Livesey is exploring the disconnect the exists between our unstated private desires and feelings and the desires/feelings we choose to present to the world and the harm it does. Using four different characters (each one connected to a British author - Keats, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Bronte/Virginia Woolf, and Charles Dickens - who know each other she explores the assumptions they (and we as readers) make and the consequences of those assumptions. I thought is was an extremely skillful book, More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 17, 2008

Roberta rated it:

I'd give this one 4.5 stars. Well-written with compelling intertwining narratives told from four different perspectives, the central ones being Abigail (a confident, overachieving actress/theatrical producer with a hard-edged personality) and her college friend Dara (a less confident, emotionally intense therapist who's been unsuccessful in relationships). Surprisingly, though, the book starts with Sean, Abigail's boyfriend, a long-suffering perfectionist grad student unable to finish his diss More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Dec 15, 2008

Felicity rated it:

I have just finished reading this book. I feel like my insides have been turned-out and thrown on the sidewalk. I want to weep long and hard for Dara, even though she is nothing more than a fictional creation of Margot Livesey's mind. That perhaps, speaks, to the power of Livesey's work. The novel is broken into four parts; each part is presented from the perspective of a different character. We learn about each individual's life and then how each of them sees the same event/s that form the More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Livesey, a professor at Emerson College in Boston, is a master of character development. She evokes her subjects' lives and multilayered emotional states so vividly that commonplace scenes contain novelty and tension. Though the story is divided into four self-contained sections, each narrated by a different character, critics were pleased to note that Livesey adeptly maintains control of the intricate plot. Most were charmed by her vibrant prose, sparkling with clarity and insight, and her freq

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 17, 2009

Rachel rated it:

This book was very similar to Olive Kitteridge in that it gives several different perspectives of people with intersecting lives. Again, it makes me sad to see their futile attempts to piece together a meaningful existence and their brokenness- so evident in the decisions they make and the directions their lives are steered in.

But I also couldn't put it down. I found myself wanting to read more and hoping for a redeeming moment that made all their suffering worthwhile- that maybe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 19, 2011

Jodie rated it:

Although the prose in this book is normally a style I really like; sparse and straightforward, the characters are just very difficult to get along with. We have 4 narratives in this book, and it is too much, probably because of the stultifying amount of heavy subjects the author goes into. I had no idea, and if I did I would not have chosen this book, the themes this book would cover. I don't shy away from a difficult read, infact I usually prefer it. A couple of them on their own would have bee More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 24, 2010

Sarah rated it:

Margot Livesey can write. Her keen characterizations and gift of descriptive detail remind me of Anne Tyler or Ian McEwan. Which is no small praise.

This is a book about the secrets we keep from one another, and the devastating, corrosive effects those secrets can have. Told in four parts--each focusing on a different character--the story entwines and doubles back quite a bit, like a fragmented collage whose ultimate impact is only realized at the end. These are not bad people, More...

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Feb 07, 2010

Kasey rated it:

I loved Margot Livesey's earlier books so much (introduced to her by fabulous Grace), but I was scared away from reading her more recent ones by a really bad review in the NY Times book review. Maybe this should teach me not to pay so much attention to reviews? The review wasn't actually of this book, but her previous one, Banishing Verona. And The House on Fortune Street is so incredibly good, moving, sad, surprising, that now I may go out and read Banishing Verona, too, in spite of the Time More...

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Jan 08, 2010

Michelle rated it:

The NYTBR inexplicaby refers to this as a book about "spinsters" even though two of the main sections are narrated by men and even though....the book has nothing at all to do with "spinsters"; nor is it a treatise on women choosing not to marry. Nor is it, as they also say, a Rashomonlike tale.

So, what is it? Told in four discreet sections by two male and two female characters, it is a disquisition on loneliness and isolation and, most important, the secrets we fe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 15, 2009

Lisa rated it:

It is my good fortune to have discovered Margot Livesey’s The House on Fortune Street. It has many of the things I love in a book: a London setting, allusions to British Literature, precise and lyrical language and a mesmerizing story. Yum.

The titular house is owned by Abigail, who bought it with money inherited from an aunt. Her best friend from college, Dara, lives on the first floor. Dara is actually the center of the story - the three other main characters all have a connecti More...

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May 27, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

I picked up this novel on the Friday before the long weekend. I was going up to Maine to spend a few days in my in-laws cabin on a pond, and I wanted a novel that would absorb me. And this one fit the bill. Sometimes when a book gets excellent reviews from the top book critics, I personally find the novel boring. But this book earned rave reviews, and was suspenseful and engaging. It's told from four characters' points of view: Sean, a divorced student living with his former mistress, Abiga More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 01, 2009

Khaya rated it:

A tragedy occurs which affects four characters, and in this novel (really four interlocking novellas), each character has a narrative which sheds new light on the tragedy. The characters are Sean, a doctoral student struggling with whether or not to continue his dissertation after seven years of limited progress; Sean’s live-in girlfriend, Abigail, whose feelings for Sean are far more transient than Sean’s passion for her; their downstairs neighbor, Dara, Abigail’s best friend from college and More...

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May 14, 2011

Shelley rated it:

This book was the perfect segue from the mayhem of final exam week to the ease of summer! Even after spending a long, grueling night grading research papers with the knowledge that I had get up in a few hours, I still wanted to crawl into bed with my flashlight and read this book as long as I could keep myself awake.

The House on Fortune Street is suspenseful and compelling. It's filled with enough allusions to Dickens and Bronte to keep the literature lover engaged without being h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 03, 2009

Priscilla rated it:

Well, I don't know what's wrong with me but I hated this book. I found the writing so utterly dull I could barely stay awake. The structure was interesting and the references to the four novelists helped string the narrative along, but I could have cared less about these self-involved characters and found it utter drudgery to go back and finish the book. They were so two-dimensional and their motivations so predictable. Of course Abigail is a brilliant actor, of course she gets a scholarship More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 23, 2011

Mum rated it:

I am in a rut. Every book I pick up is a collection of stories. What's sad is I am by now trying to avoid them but failing. The last four books I have read fit this form, loosely. The House on Fortune Street is the best of the group, but I am ready for a novel with a beginning, middle and end in just that order, and one voice, please.
To be fair, this book was wonderful, and had I read it first, I think I would have stopped the others after fifteen pages as not worth my time. I don't think More...

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Mar 09, 2010

Bibliophile rated it:

I must shamefacedly admit that I confused Margot Livesey with Penelope Lively when I purchased this book! After having read The House on Fortune Street however, I can only thank serendipity for my own confusion because it was a brilliant and moving novel. Told from the perspective of four different characters, Sean, Cameron, Dara and Abigail, we learn what leads up to the central, tragic event that occurs a short way into the book. Each of the characters has a literary godfather or godmother More...

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Oct 22, 2009

Kim rated it:

i am very unsure of what i think about this book. The reason for Cameron leaving is one that has unsetteled me. I feel it was a gratuitous use of a very serious issue and that the 'benefits' for the novel were not large enough to make it worth using. But i kow many would disagree with me.

the relatinship between Dara and Abigail was, I thought, very true and real. The technique of having four interwoven narratives gave the reader a opportunity to see the whys of the relationship from More...

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Jul 30, 2008

Joan rated it:

A wonderful book. It is an overlapping story told from four different perspectives. Each of the characters lives are shaped by childhood events as well as fate. Very well written - it drew me in and I couldn't wait to find out more about each character.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 28, 2009

Diane rated it:

I really liked The House on Fortune Street. It's not necessarily the happiest of stories, but I thought the author did a good job of interweaving the lives of the major characters. There is a constant theme of leaving and/or being left in this book. In the case of Abigail and Dara, they both "lose" their parents (physically and figuratively) although at the time the parents thought they were doing the best thing for their children. Unfortunately, the various forms of abandonment leav More...

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Nov 22, 2009

Eileen rated it:

I had read good things in the LA Times about Livesey's "The House on Fortune Street," but I decided to wait for it to arrive through paperbackswap rather than run out to buy it. For once I made a good decision.

I liked this book. I did not love this book.

I liked Livesy's method of using different narrators to tell the same story with new elements of backstory in each part. I liked the literary allusions, which I think she spelled out more than necessary. It More...

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Aug 11, 2009

Deb rated it:

I loved this book. Four narratives, four voices, four lives that intersect, all surrounding one pivotal event. (In brief, a 20-something woman, Amanda, lives on the second floor of a house in London and rents out the first floor to her childhood best friend, Dara. Those are the two female voices. The other voices are Amanda's lover Sean, and Dara's father.) Each narrative reveals something entirely new about that character and the others as well.

OK, that structure is not new, but Ma More...

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May 29, 2011

Fatuma rated it:

I wish I could give this a 2/5 because I'm completely stuck on the fence on this one. I didn't hate it enough to give it 1 or 2 stars, but I also didn't like it enough to give it 4 and certainly not 5 stars. The story was a bit bland. The writing wasn't horrible. The characters, however were! Okay, I exaggerate just a bit, but I found them so irritating! It was mostly the females that annoyed me. The story is suppose to be about how four people tell their own story of certain events in their pas More...

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May 05, 2010

Suzy rated it:

I liked the structure of this book: narrator telling basically the same story from different characters' points of view, each illuminating some mysteries and moving the story further chronologically. I also liked one of the themes, which I thought was presented very thoughtfully: What is one who has socially unacceptable desires (even harmful ones) to do? The book takes place in present-day England and revolves around two best friends and their boyfriends and one of the girls' fathers. The w More...

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Apr 30, 2009

Miriam rated it:

Wow. What a book. I was drawn in immediately by Sean’s point of view, and was curious about the characters, enough so that when the point of view switched what seemed like suddenly to Cameron at first I was irritated. But of course Sean’s point of view is kind of the least important in the book. And then I read Cameron’s story and I was both disgusted and in awe. How could Margot Livesey imagine the inside of such a man’s head. And then it switched again and again and I was just awestruck by eac More...

6 comments like

Jan 16, 2011

Becky rated it:

This well-written book deserves at least 4 stars, maybe more, though it is so sad and disillusioning that I find it hard to recommend. I think it would be a very good discussion book for groups willing to tackle a book about complex relationships.

The story is skillfully told in 4 parts by 4 different characters whose lives intertwine and whose stories overlap. Two of the characters are unmarried women in their 30s, one is a man who leaves his wife for one of those women and the fourth More...

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Aug 08, 2008

Gerrybergstein rated it:

Livesey's best with the possible excetption of "Homework"
Wonderful in its exploration of the relativity of perception of others motive

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 17, 2010

Rachael rated it:

I love a British voice, although now that Ms. Livesey lives in Massachusetts I am not sure if she is still considered 100% British. But more importantly, i thoroughly enjoyed this book. The story and characters were completely believable and their struggles (which were complex and interconnected) were told with the polite, non-intrusive delicacy that I so love in modern British fiction. I loved how the story was told from the perspective of the four main characters-each section illuminated new More...

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Dec 21, 2008

Jessica rated it:

I found the description in the book jacket to be somewhat misleading. Abby and Dara's relationship didn't feel like the major focus to me, and I certainly didn't notice anything about luck in the themes. Describing this book to others, I have said that it's about a young woman's suicide told from four different points of view. I found that structure -- the four different stories woven together into one -- to be very interesting, and it allows the reader to piece together Dara's psyche bit by bit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 05, 2011

Katya rated it:

Amazing complex prose that at first might appear as a simple unambiguous narration. In the beginning of the book I kept thinking - where is it all going? It takes getting all the way to the end to get the answers and realize that no part of the book was accidental, every event had a meaning and a consequence. Living with "inappropriate desires", the role of secrecy and subtext, childhood dramas, and the true meaning of luck are the most standout themes thrown for your contemplation. Th More...

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Jan 29, 2009

Jeff rated it:

Margot Livesey's newest offering is a generous and touching novel. She writes with insight and compassion, creating a novel that is not only thought and emotion provoking, but also eminently enjoyable and readable.

Over the course of four interwoven narratives, Livesey reveals how secrets, sex, and death inform, change, and shape our lives. The four primary characters are superbly well-rounded and the story arch that brings these four disparate people together is tightly, ingeniously More...

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