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Das große Haus.
Elizabeth can't accept that her brother James, her nursery soulmate, committed suicide, so when her sister dies too it is more than she can comprehend. As she wanders the large family mansion of her childhood, she is forced to face up to her hidden fears and make sense of the confusion of sadness.
Hardcover
First published December 13, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 13, 2018
Over the years, I have seen very few reviews of Helena McEwen's work; she seems to be quite an underappreciated author. I have read her other two published novels before - Ghost Girl (2004) and Invisible River (2011) - and very much enjoyed both, but the overall ratings on Goodreads for both books are rather low (average ratings of 2.82 and 3.10 respectively). The Big House, her debut novel, has been even more poorly rated, with an average score of 2.65. It is, however, my favourite amongst what I feel are three very good novels.
The Independent on Sunday deems The Big House 'brilliant... A book of immense skill and unique vision', and the Observer calls it 'touching, poetic and utterly unsentimental.' In the novel, protagonist Elizabeth's brother James has committed suicide. After her sister Kitty also passes away, a victim of drowning, 'it is more than she can bear. As she wanders the large family mansion of her childhood - a haunting place of mystery, wonder and opulence - the memories of an apparently idyllic but secretly threatening past will not let her go.' She makes her way to Scotland, where the family home is about to be sold, in order to be alone with the memory of her siblings.
From the first, I found Elizabeth's narrative voice both mesmerising and absorbing. Trying to make sense of her loss, she asks: 'What has happened in that time, from spring to autumn, the lifetime of a leaf? What happened when it poked its way through the four small doors, and unfurled its pale-green folded-up pleats to the world? James died. And what happened as the yellow green darkened to summer green, then began to turn yellow at the edges as late summer crept along the branches? Kitty died...'. When this particular reflection begins, Elizabeth stands at the point in the year when the leaves are falling.
The narrative voice in The Big House is very connected to the natural world; such attention has been given to sensation and colour particularly. Given the nature of the death of both siblings, one so deliberate and the other an accident, Elizabeth has to imagine that both are now in a better place: 'And I can't think of Kitty's terrified struggle for life, and I can't think of the pain that made James pull the trigger, because I can feel where they have gone. It is a singing place full of light. It dazzles me. I long for the sweetness of it. It is home, and I want to go home.'
The imagery in The Big House is by turns fragile and stark. McEwen writes, for example, 'James went along to the gun room and took a rifle down from the stand. He must have loaded it at night in the dark, and he lay down outside in the leaves and hugged the gun as though it was a friend.' The scenes which depict grief are touching and raw. After James' death on the aforementioned night, Elizabeth recalls: 'Kitty and I lay on a bed in a hotel with the window open. I didn't want to leave her, even go out of the room. I didn't want to be anywhere without her, and feel all the feelings about James on my own. So we lay together on the bed, with our bare arms wrapped around each other, letting the terrible feelings pass through at the same time, and outside we could hear the sea lapping against the rocks and the seagulls calling plaintive cries in the air. They called through us, and the sound felt our pain.'
One gets a sense of something other than realism filling Elizabeth's childhood; there are, on occasion, elements of the otherworldly, and a continuing feeling of being observed by the unknown. 'The invisible beings of the house seem to draw closer to me and I feel their shadows passing through me. Little winds blow in my ear, and make me shiver, and strange wispy feelings slide up and down my spine.' I very much enjoyed the use of the unreliable narrator which McEwen created here, and the brief sense of retrospect at the beginning of the novel, before the narrative which follows is filled with childhood memories. There is not a great deal of plot when this ensues, but the scenes and memories which are woven in are striking and memorable. There is a timeless quality to this story; it is never stated explicitly when events occur, and very few cultural details can be found throughout. The Big House provides a lovely, and quite thorough, exploration of a childhood, and the strength of sibling relationships.
The Independent on Sunday deems The Big House 'brilliant... A book of immense skill and unique vision', and the Observer calls it 'touching, poetic and utterly unsentimental.' In the novel, protagonist Elizabeth's brother James has committed suicide. After her sister Kitty also passes away, a victim of drowning, 'it is more than she can bear. As she wanders the large family mansion of her childhood - a haunting place of mystery, wonder and opulence - the memories of an apparently idyllic but secretly threatening past will not let her go.' She makes her way to Scotland, where the family home is about to be sold, in order to be alone with the memory of her siblings.
From the first, I found Elizabeth's narrative voice both mesmerising and absorbing. Trying to make sense of her loss, she asks: 'What has happened in that time, from spring to autumn, the lifetime of a leaf? What happened when it poked its way through the four small doors, and unfurled its pale-green folded-up pleats to the world? James died. And what happened as the yellow green darkened to summer green, then began to turn yellow at the edges as late summer crept along the branches? Kitty died...'. When this particular reflection begins, Elizabeth stands at the point in the year when the leaves are falling.
The narrative voice in The Big House is very connected to the natural world; such attention has been given to sensation and colour particularly. Given the nature of the death of both siblings, one so deliberate and the other an accident, Elizabeth has to imagine that both are now in a better place: 'And I can't think of Kitty's terrified struggle for life, and I can't think of the pain that made James pull the trigger, because I can feel where they have gone. It is a singing place full of light. It dazzles me. I long for the sweetness of it. It is home, and I want to go home.'
The imagery in The Big House is by turns fragile and stark. McEwen writes, for example, 'James went along to the gun room and took a rifle down from the stand. He must have loaded it at night in the dark, and he lay down outside in the leaves and hugged the gun as though it was a friend.' The scenes which depict grief are touching and raw. After James' death on the aforementioned night, Elizabeth recalls: 'Kitty and I lay on a bed in a hotel with the window open. I didn't want to leave her, even go out of the room. I didn't want to be anywhere without her, and feel all the feelings about James on my own. So we lay together on the bed, with our bare arms wrapped around each other, letting the terrible feelings pass through at the same time, and outside we could hear the sea lapping against the rocks and the seagulls calling plaintive cries in the air. They called through us, and the sound felt our pain.'
One gets a sense of something other than realism filling Elizabeth's childhood; there are, on occasion, elements of the otherworldly, and a continuing feeling of being observed by the unknown. 'The invisible beings of the house seem to draw closer to me and I feel their shadows passing through me. Little winds blow in my ear, and make me shiver, and strange wispy feelings slide up and down my spine.' I very much enjoyed the use of the unreliable narrator which McEwen created here, and the brief sense of retrospect at the beginning of the novel, before the narrative which follows is filled with childhood memories. There is not a great deal of plot when this ensues, but the scenes and memories which are woven in are striking and memorable. There is a timeless quality to this story; it is never stated explicitly when events occur, and very few cultural details can be found throughout. The Big House provides a lovely, and quite thorough, exploration of a childhood, and the strength of sibling relationships.
November 16, 2022
I chose this book because it looked thin and the small anecdote on the back looked interesting to read and write about. I expected the book to have a little bit more action, because it’s a story about a girl named Elizabeth who’s brother James committed suicide. Her sister Kitty died also, these events made me curious about the book and led me to reading it. When I read the book I was kind of disappointed about the fact that the book is very tedious and boring to read further, because there’s not a lot going on in the story apart of the death of her siblings.
I didn’t enjoy reading the book, because this book is the complete opposite type of book that I normally read. I normally read books with a lot of action in them and books about history and war. The book when reading became very dull very fast, the beginning of the book was also very hard to follow and it was sometimes very confusing. In my opinion there’ no point/moral in the story, which makes it less fun to read. What I do like about the book is that it’s written in the I form, you can really empathize in the characters and make the story a little bit more fun by using imagination.
At the end, I would not recommend the book to a friend. This book is more for people who like calm and vague stories. Personally I don’t know why someone would read this book, because there is not really a goal or a plot in the book, respectfully. This book is more for elderly people and not for the youth.
I didn’t enjoy reading the book, because this book is the complete opposite type of book that I normally read. I normally read books with a lot of action in them and books about history and war. The book when reading became very dull very fast, the beginning of the book was also very hard to follow and it was sometimes very confusing. In my opinion there’ no point/moral in the story, which makes it less fun to read. What I do like about the book is that it’s written in the I form, you can really empathize in the characters and make the story a little bit more fun by using imagination.
At the end, I would not recommend the book to a friend. This book is more for people who like calm and vague stories. Personally I don’t know why someone would read this book, because there is not really a goal or a plot in the book, respectfully. This book is more for elderly people and not for the youth.
September 15, 2018
This is a short, slight book, with not a lot going on. It basically describes a time and a place. There is a book-ending device, which lets us know what happens in their 20s to the 3 central child characters we read about in between, and to the house which is the setting of the book, but that adds less than it could have done. I could have done without that, and with a bit more joined-up plot in the middle.
It's apparently an autobiographical novel, and at times it reads like a memoir of anecdotes. There is a lack of cohesion which would have added depth.
What is brilliantly done, is the depiction of the inner life of an imaginative six year-old. Her upbringing is unusual in life, less so in literature. She's the child of a large aristocratic Catholic family in a Scotland manor house in the 1970s. There are nature, wildness, servants, chapel, nursery teas, shootin' & fishin', corporal punishment, a cold mother, an alcoholic father, and glamorous adult social events viewed through the banisters. So: exactly what you'd expect. There are the hints of ghosts, too, but no details. There's an accident with an air rifle which any responsible adult could have seen coming a mile off.
All-in-all, Helena McEwen does a good job at describing a childhood I could have imagined for myself, which would have done better being the setting & background to an actual story, rather than the entire contents of a novel all on its own.
It's apparently an autobiographical novel, and at times it reads like a memoir of anecdotes. There is a lack of cohesion which would have added depth.
What is brilliantly done, is the depiction of the inner life of an imaginative six year-old. Her upbringing is unusual in life, less so in literature. She's the child of a large aristocratic Catholic family in a Scotland manor house in the 1970s. There are nature, wildness, servants, chapel, nursery teas, shootin' & fishin', corporal punishment, a cold mother, an alcoholic father, and glamorous adult social events viewed through the banisters. So: exactly what you'd expect. There are the hints of ghosts, too, but no details. There's an accident with an air rifle which any responsible adult could have seen coming a mile off.
All-in-all, Helena McEwen does a good job at describing a childhood I could have imagined for myself, which would have done better being the setting & background to an actual story, rather than the entire contents of a novel all on its own.
September 28, 2017
I honestly think there was no point to this book. It took me forever to get into, the beginning was hard to follow and didn't provide enough context. I understand it was MEANT to draw in the reader but it was just confusing. By the time I figured out what was going on, I was bored, as nothing really had happened.
The rest of the book was ok. Mildly interesting plot if at all, and ...unremarkable, and pointless, like I said. Blah.
The rest of the book was ok. Mildly interesting plot if at all, and ...unremarkable, and pointless, like I said. Blah.
January 31, 2017
Story about children in the big house... It's nice and playful and gives typical atmospheres from childhood. Subtly it also addresses issues the aristocracy was dealing with, like losing their estate dur to stamp duty etc.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 23, 2013
Her debut novel I think. A good read but nothing startling.
October 10, 2015
This first person narrative revolves around the childhood reminiscences of Elizabeth who loses both a brother and sister in the span of a few months. It's like the story begins in the middle.
April 29, 2016
Boring.
June 22, 2023
What seemed like such a promising book about a lovely childhood but with no real purpose or direction. There wasn’t really even a story line
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews