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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/86655.The_Keep?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Keep" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1171075825m/86655.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/86655.The_Keep?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Keep</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/49625.Jennifer_Egan">Jennifer Egan</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17659514?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 3 of 5 stars<br/>My review of this book will sound like it deserves more stars than I've given it, because overall, I only found one flaw in this fine homage to ghost stories and their tellers. Unfortunately, it's a major one, though I'm sure some will read right past it without so much as a blip. Egan sets up two fascinating threads, that of two cousins coming together in adulthood to play out the effects a long-held secret between them, and the prisoner crafting their tale while taking a writing class from a woman he wants to impress. Both worlds are vividly evoked, and the two central figures both haunted in ways that play out to page-turning effects. The one flaw is how Egan makes these narratives collide in the book's climax. To me, it feels rushed and therefore contrived in a way the rest of the book is not, which is no small feat considering the overused elements she's working with: the prisoner with the heart of gold, the haunted castle in a remote village, and the more recently overused element, the writer of the story being in the novel (see Atonement, The History of Love, The Blind Assassin, et al.). And it's really too bad that she made that choice, because in every other way, I loved this book, its love for writing and storytelling, the way it shows us what it really means to be haunted in modern society. And especially the final chapter, which solidifies that latter theme in a beautifully lyric voice that haunts the reader long after it's done. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/957423?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>