Glass Houses

by Anne Coombs

Raymond causes a stir in the country town of Glaston when he buys
Glastonbridge, a house of vast, neo-Gothic fantasy abandoned for decades.
It’s an ambitious project, and all previous renovators have come to grief.
Out of the woodwork real estate agents, a jealous sister, the heritage council,
prospective tourism operators and journalists, proffering opinions, make his
life a misery.
As the restoration goes on, Raymond becomes increasingly isolated, unable
to trust anyone, alienating his friends and giving courage to his enemies. He
believes that unseen forces are trying to remove him from his grand project.
At turns pitied, admired, humoured and loved, Raymond undoubtedly has
the knowledge, vision and fortune to make Glastonbridge thrive again, but
will he be able to see it through?
Glass Houses is a gentle satire with a rapier edge, perfectly capturing the
socially mobile mid-nineties milieu of city folk with country houses. Anne
Coombs’s final novel is about finding your place of refuge and reaching for
what you want

257 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Anne Coombs has been a journalist, author, social activist and philanthropist. She is the author of five books, including Sex and Anarchy: The life and death of the Sydney Push (Viking, 1996) and Broometime (Hodder Headline, 2001), co-authored with Susan Varga.

Anne was one of the founders of Rural Australians for Refugees, and is a past board member and chair of GetUp!. From 2004 to 2014, she was executive director of the Becher Foundation, a private foundation with particular interest in supporting refugees and asylum seekers, regional communities and indigenous education. She has recently completed a feature film script set in Australia’s far north.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Manderley, that grand haunted house of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, a gothic mansion hiding secrets and invoking ghosts lies at the heart of Anne Coombs’ novel, Glass Houses. It is a parting gift from the acclaimed writer, philanthropist and social activist who died before this book was published.
Anne’s fantastic house, Glastonbridge, is a dark, stone-walled, turreted monster, that might be deemed a glass house only by virtue of its location. It sits on a rise above the fictional River Glass which separates the lonely manor from the town of Glaston.
Glastonbridge stood abandoned and forgotten behind a screen of trees until Raymond Taylor discovered it. Raymond fell obsessively under the spell of the house, bought the place and embarked on an endless endeavour to restore the property to its true glory.
The author’s first-person narrator is an unintrusive, unnamed observer, who appears only occasionally, and then mostly to locate us in this looking-glass world she’s come to love. She has rented a small cottage on the outskirts of town to escape her life and has been embraced by Raymond’s affable friends. ‘Because I needed distraction it was easy to be swept up in their lives - easier than dealing with my own,’ she tells us. She never reveals what her own issues might be. But Anne Coombs herself, the creator of this world, knew she was dying when she completed this novel. ‘A house like Glastonbridge is a window to another world,’ says her narrator, and the people in that world ‘held back the darkness’.
We, too, come to know and like Raymond, along with his intriguing circle of friends. In public, the adorable Raymond is urbane, dresses exquisitely and is a splendid dinner party conversationalist among his witty, mostly wealthy, bon vivant associates. He is carefully not openly gay, which is perhaps his undoing. Apart from his passion for the house, his over-riding concerns are his would-be-socialite sister Lillian, who claws at him for money from their family estate, and Theo Roth.
Theo is a corpulent real estate ‘consultant’ whose snazzy white suits and white fedora are his signature. He and Raymond have a deep-seated enmity. Theo doesn’t understand exactly why he so envies Raymond, but he covets Raymond’s possessions. Theo and Lillian, the novel’s bêtes noires, hound Raymond, alternatively baying for his blood, like substitute Baskerville canines.
Other well-developed characters who enrich this world include Philip, a refined young protégé of Raymond’s, who admires his mentor and perhaps loves him more than any other character we meet; Titus and Sally, a gregarious couple who live in the embrace of a vineyard and throw their home open for delicious entertainments; Norma and Joan, elderly women who run a bookstore and have secret lives that reveal themselves in the course of the novel; Brenda, a young journalist, who is manipulated and in turn manipulates the course of the events; Clover, a talented furniture restorer whom Raymond has employed fulltime.
Sweet Clover doesn’t quite understand what transpires for her during an encounter that takes place at the Mardi Gras parade in Sydney. The exuberant chapter written about the Mardi Gras is full of joie de vivre, describing the gorgeous creatures who stream along Oxford Street, causing Raymond to feel, yet again, out of place. For the occasion Raymond chooses a conservative suit with a sober pink tie, which he assures his socialite friend ‘the countess’ is merely a concession to the event. She raises her eyebrows.
The novel unfolds in tragic ways, though not for all the characters. Some find liberation from the ties of their former lives. Sally, for instance, goes off to spend the northern winter at an art school in Florence. “Something just for myself” she told the narrator.
Glass Houses is a beautiful something, which Anne gifted to us. Read it as the glorious folly she meant it to be, not a mirror into the author’s social or political concerns. Glass Houses is, as Graham Greene referred to the art of his fiction, a way of escape.

The reviewer, Jane Camens, was a personal friend of the author, Anne Coombs.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

For most urban Aussies the nearest they get to Australian country houses of the type favoured by wealthy renovators is through the pages of the lifestyle magazines like Vogue or reality lifestyle programs like Country House Rescue.  But the late Anne Coombs — author, philanthropist and activist for refugees — was a resident of Exeter in the NSW southern highlands, which markets itself like this:

It's time to experience English heritage. This thriving village is home to a large number of English style estates, a picture postcard historic Church and country railway station, both of which could have been lifted straight from an Agatha Christie film set.

This village personifies the 'little England' name tag so often associated with the Southern Highlands.

In fact it was named after its English counterpart because of the lush green countryside and the profusion of deciduous trees brought to Australia by the early settlers is indeed very 'English'.

Set in the mid-nineties, Glass Houses satirises the 'renovation scene'  in a novel whose (fictional) village setting allows for a cast of eccentric characters.  The central character Raymond (nursing nostalgia for the family home in Tasmania), buys the derelict mansion Glastonbridge, and embarks on the painstaking business of restoring it to its former glory.  This involves rival antique dealers Phillip and Theo in Sydney, and local craftspeople such as the woodworker Coral and the jack-of-all-trades Bob.  There's also Duane who emerges as co-conspirator with hostile forces i.e. developers and the National Trust.

Having inherited well, Raymond seems to have plenty of money, were it not for his Awful Sister, Lillian.  She is recently widowed and is the owner of an apartment in New York that would solve her money troubles — but she doesn't want to part with it and so attaches herself to Raymond in an on-again-off-again relationship that involves borrowing (a lot of) money from him but not wanting to pay him back. He OTOH needs somewhere to stay in Sydney when he goes hunting for items for the house... and more importantly, she is the only family he has.

Raymond is a troubled man, and not just because the house is in chaos.

TO read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/07/09/g...

[Gretchen Bernet-Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lyrical, complex, thought-provoking posthumous novel from Anne Coombs in relation to families and our deep connection to the homes and houses in our lives. Raymond, Norma, Joan, William and others discover how a dwelling like neo-Gothic Glastonbridge can shape us. Indeed, restoring and keeping a roof over one’s head can make or break a person’s character. Raymond has money and means but the town is rife with gossip as to whether or not he can resurrect Glastonbridge and carry the grandiose plan through to completion. One look at the elaborate bookcover tells the reader of the challenges ahead as does the title simile.

Joan wasn’t sure she liked Glastonbridge, she recoiled from it, overwhelmed. This paragraph from Glass Houses Coombs final story speaks volumes: “In Tasmania they almost managed it. There where the land was greener, the sky greyer, the light softer, they imposed their solid homes and neat hedges, grew crops and reared sheep, wore their tailored clothes and played their English games, ate off Worcester china and Sheffield plate. All the time trying to master the structure, order and contain, to mould the new world to their ancestral pattern...The houses, transplanted from Hertfordshire to Hobart, clamped on untrustworthy soil, demanding compliance.”

[Fran · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a disappointing book. There was no real character development and the plot meandered along. The characters all seemed super rich and were more interested in their possesions than each other. There was antagonism between the main character and one other, but the source of this was never explained. There was also another character who talks directly to the reader, but again her relationship with the others is never really explained, and we never learn her name. The author died two years before publication and I wonder if someone found this unfinished manuscript and decided to publish it. It feels more like the notes for a novel rather than an actual novel.

[Gavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, nah. Started well - nicely written and slightly cutting satire. But didn't seem to progress. The focus was on Raymond and Philip, with a bewildering cast of extras who I struggled to keep track of, but without any real character development. The dialogue felt stilted. And the story just meandered without any real propulsion. Not for me.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unsettling book but very well written. Covered so many facets of life- friendship, love, greed, jealously. A subtle satire on the life of wealthy elite in 80's Australia. Lots of interesting characters, some likeable but others quite nasty people.

[Eben Rojter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satirical take on the elitist upper class, with a feel of transposing the 'Antiques Roadshow' types to country NSW.
Enjoyed it to pick-up/put down, but only in smaller dosed given how objectional some of the characters being sent up are.

[Brenda Rosser]

v. fine